No one had seen him. They lifted a face from a televised lineup—statesman or actor, cosmeticized singer—then averaged the features and rendered an image in pastels on plaster. Chalked hominid shapes all over the city, sidewalks impastoed with quicklime and blood. Shriftless, the flock came in droves from the slaughter, trafficker and homicide to his cinderblock altar, and sought the familiar marauder’s composite. Crude figures…
Galileo in Arcetri
Ephemeris left open, transfixed by his blank gaze and one ancient ray arriving. Inside his blindness, a remembered sky: widdershins zodiac over the slanted campanile. The stones he’s thrown float up again, the vespers’ bells transpose themselves into a higher night now: neural carillon, signal fires across his darkening hemispheres: brief suns just touched with light from farther years.
May Wilson with Andy Warhol
FUTURE GIRL by William Winfield Wright
She can only just go there. That’s the super power. Get on a plane or train, even walk to the store and back and it’s later, the future, just like that. It’s not very feminist, but she can sleep there too, close her eyes and Shazam, the next day, tomorrow. It’s not that flashy. I’ve seen her do it standing in the kitchen, and we’ve…
BIRD FEET by William Winfield Wright
If I had bird feet everything would be different. I’d start paying attention to where I put myself, lifting the knees like they say, going without shoes, leaving tracks. I’d become comfortable in public conversation. “No, actually. I just woke up one day and there they were looking up at me from the bottom of the bed.” My strangeness would…