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Four Poems from Child of Storm

Tesla is Born

The sound of a shell at your ear
	in an expansive void
		that is the mouth of the universe
Lightening across the curve of the eye
	A crack in the spheres
allowing a peek at the undergarments of God
And then the earth is revealed
	by the pounding of rain
		knives		broken bones
What is this moment
	where the sky pulls itself apart at the sutures
		drops a child
on the waiting flower
			of Croatia
A Child of Storm poems by Michael J. Wilson
 

Optica

What does
a glass of light look like?

Mercury
meniscus – blue-hinged
casting
laziness on your hand

What is its taste?

Oddly lemon
rose – juniper

	gin cleaning fluid 
		static

It flows uphill

seeps

in the opposite of shadow

This flask of it – corked at the hip

recedes into memory
the second you’ve seen it
 

Edwin Davis & The Electric Chair

Brown came with a crate.
The kind milk bottles condense in.

He sat it down. In the center of the room.
I had spent the day clearing cobwebs, a rug.

I used parts of the crate to make the chair.

Stringing the wires, using the Edison diagram
The Brown instructions.

I shot 1000 volts through Kemmler
then again until he burst to flame.

The skin around the metal became leather.
	They would have done better using an axe.

I shot volts into a woman. Into the man who shot McKinley.

I got to meet J.P. Morgan. Twice.

	Every time –
The smell –
 

Topsy

flesh is stone –
rippling –
	will not be caged –

the neck – frozen
	at an angle – some degrees
off normal –


the man smiling broadly
his hand on the polished wood handle
of a switch

		 – the crowd is not breathing
– the children are staring
		
			wires from the switch
		to a frame around the head
		to shackles on the ankles –


the elephant – begins – to bleed – from its ears

	poisoned strangled electrocuted

		she falls –


you cannot imagine – the amount of heaving skin

	she refused to cross to death
	wired where she stood – they had to bring death to her

the earthquake of trumpets –

–Michael J. Wilson


Poetry

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