Leonore Wilson

Image Credit: Michael Cory

Persephone's Return

She had never been timorous

so when the dark satanic milk

was offered her she chugged it

down among the corn lilies

and wild onions, this girl

who played with dragon geese

and garter snakes and the god

fed her in the house of his father

the ferment of dervishes

so she could become one

singing of the philosophy

of surrender, its radiance,

the hieroglyphics of rivers,

of ten thousand paths

that dig through sandstone and

thus she became a scholar

of gargoyles, of fleas and greed,

of everything marred, harmed,

a shepherd to envy, to the ignorant,

to the gods of oil and war, those

with golden purse strings

who exploit the backs of slaves,

for she was taught well

by the master who had drugged her,

suckling that sweet milk

of rage and revenge, so when

she returned to her mother

with her whip-marks

and scars, she needed

more than just an apple

and a cigarette, she glared at her maker,

scratched at her, hot-tempered

wench, balking

for she was the daughter

of everything knowable,

her world held the veracity

of ours: mangled carcass,

retractable claw.

Tyger

As a child, he chose the most inviolable—

fiery-orange with black stripes;

his small feet

could not nail the stirrups

so I pressed his hands to the pole—

young voyager

and mother, we spun as the monstrance

harp crowed like a Gallic cock,

as the body pulled around the soul—

wretched animal strapped

at the neck, while nearby

the fallow water and the toy train shook.

O radiant we were, gazing out

at each other as God must have

gazed over chaos, the bruise of enough

dividing the dry from the

wet, as the spirit

of creation separated from

the black of eternity, this

our animist kingdom, our garden, deceptive,

though full of promise. Here we were

dressed in sunlight, barren

in thought,

when in the distance

the cathedrals

sounded their iron bells

reminding us with every ballast-bong

we mortals were paradox:

curved doves, dying heroes,

vile, sinful and certain

of punishment.

Time Capsule

When they open it

years from now,

when the olden days

come pouring out

will there still be

ordinary things

like wind up clocks

and packets of cigarettes,

candies, chips, and

snacks; will there be

commodities and

guarantees, banknotes

and headscarves,

tractors and combines,

bovines lowing in meadows,

children’s toys whittled

from bark, ferry rides

and merry go rounds;

will there be those

sleeping under blankets

on the sidewalk and

migrants working in the fields;

will there be quicklime and dry rot,

small country churches

and mustachioed policeman;

will there be death

with all its awareness

and birth that comes

like a bright light,

will your memory

and my memory

be contained

in our progeny

or will the days

be indifferent like

something cracked

without movement,

in other words

will the flame of life

still hold as it does

today, burning brightly

like the touch of kerosene

on paper.

Practical World

He said he wanted to know

what they knew—those who did

practical things like building boats

or cleaning streets, so my son

shaped by the sharp angles

of academia decided to live

on water where the red-winged

blackbirds clung to the swaying

tulles, where the cool winds of March

clipped the deluge of the cattail

thickets, and where the first settlers

of the Delta needed words to describe

their often dire predicament:

Disappointment Slough, Hope Trace, Poverty Road.

Here life had been unpredictable, undependable

and some had drowned in the sloughs,

the desiccated bottomlands, channels, canals,...

But not my son who rose each morning

to travel to the inner city with a team

of riparian men to jackhammer

the hard macadam of Oakland, to hear

the dunch of his own blood

drum in his ear, noggle his heart

until the ground opened up

like eternity, he was that driven

my physicist, to know the gowpen of matter,

know his fellow creatures—men

who ate from tin cans and drank eagerly

from heavy thermoses as if knocking back

the sea. This was not

a straightjacket for him, this everyday

grit-grail, no it deepened his thinking,

made him love the earth more

learning the hot ooze of the hour,

this workbench mentality, grunt and pluck

of male heritage.

Book in the Garden

Here I knew he was up to something,

Practical World

​​

He said he wanted to know

​what they knew—those who did

​practical things like building boats

​or cleaning streets, so my son

​shaped by the sharp angles

​of academia decided to live

​on water where the red-winged

​blackbirds clung to the swaying

​tulles, where the cool winds of March

​clipped the deluge of the cattail

​thickets, and where the first settlers

​of the Delta needed words to describe

​their often dire predicament:

​Disappointment Slough, Hope Trace, Poverty Road.

​Here life had been unpredictable, undependable

​and some had drowned in the sloughs,

​the desiccated bottomlands, channels, canals,...​

But not my son who rose each morning

​to travel to the inner city with a team

​of riparian men to jackhammer

​the hard macadam of Oakland, to hear

​the dunch of his own blood

​drum in his ear, noggle his heart

​until the ground opened up

​like eternity, he was that driven

​my physicist, to know the gowpen of matter,

​know his fellow creatures—men

​who ate from tin cans and drank eagerly

​from heavy thermoses as if knocking back

​the sea. This was not

​a straightjacket for him, this everyday

​grit-grail, no it deepened his thinking,

​made him love the earth more

​learning the hot ooze of the hour,

​this workbench mentality, grunt and pluck

​of male heritage.

Book in the Garden

​​

practicing Portuguese amongst

the narrow rows of brotherly beanstalks and blue-shadowed squash,

​

feuding basil and recumbent tomatoes;

​

flipped dictionary offering the dew-stir of words—

restless, courageous,

my courting mid-twenties son fecund with language,

​

and me quizzing him through declensions/ conjugations

in the deep rush of dusk, in the honey-drip

​

dawn; ah how I knew my boy’s bramble fire

​

meant he was not willing to water, rake, shovel or weed,

but to distinguish

the riddled lights of Rio where he first rustled his lover....

​

Oh fat splash of summertime sounds

that shuffled him into a new culture--

renegade pup escaping indolent buttoned-down California

​

to fiery Brazil, drumming its amorous

etymology, his future once fluxing finally found.

Ode to Mustangs (after a photograph by Hardy Wilson)

​

​​​ Tumbling

dust as one solitary

male

scrabbles over the monolithic

​

Nevada desert.​

then another, with hooves kicking hard,

sharp half moons​

while phantom mice scatter into​

their canopied chamber...

​

​

These are savages, inhospitable

as the earth