Poet: Keith Wilson, Burlington, KY
Smalldoggies Poetry Feature #9: Keith Wilson, Burlington, KY
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Chapel Carter is the Inventor of the Nail Clipper
Is he crouching under
this sloping chrome, clothes
laid out among the smoke
of a small fire to keep warm by,
breathless again beneath
the bypass
of this metal frame?
In the house he built,
his name flirting with forget,
even here,
even in his own home.
Or does he line his labor
like apples and pears
along the lint-lined clip
of his window frame?
Narrow and wide, open
and closed like an aching heart,
a dying fish. Fingered by keratin
as if to clear the passage
for air. Over and over
again. Tight-fisted groups of ten;
decades of tries only pretending
to save a life.
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Clippers, as Tends to Happen, Lost in Modernism
It's not too abstract,
is it? The nail clippers
as a dead bird,
flopped over, a single wing
folded on its back,
asleep like flamingoes do,
head twisted uncomfortably backwards
(which seconds ago
was the wing, but this
is how art goes, drifting
on the wind,
inspiration as ephemeral
as leftover ice
that lives into the spring,
and this surrealism,
such a thing
that we aspire to:
pretending as if our dreams
fit on paper,
or that anything we've ever said
comes close
to the frightening
and indescribable ability
of colors and places and things
to acid meld together
like watercolors
to a mud
we somehow know
isn't mud at all, but is instead our brother,
or our mother when she was young,
or the fifth grade teacher
who said in front of everyone
that you weren't even as strong as a girl
long before you knew
why it should be a stupid thing
to be mad about), and
anyway, the point is
that it's a dead bird and I haven't
even the inclination, tonight,
to cut my toe nails.
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What Does a Nail Clipper do in Meeting a Mole?
Alcohol swabbed. Seconds here from
a quick snip. The end
of a connection. So what if
my brother uses his to open bags of snacks
or for cutting wire? Witness
the troughs of scars set in the face
of his trimmers. They keep well
outside of the confines of their creation.
But here, folded neatly for a pocket
in my own set
of intended actions: a dullness resides
seeming like the sudden replacement of a fresh
relationship, fingerprints steadfast
against reflection: complicated relationships
with the crescent
moon. Is it coming or going? Does it matter
to anybody but the sweaty backs of the waves?
Fingerprints
obvious once noticed. Like something lewd.
The grease of wet skin so intent at contact,
if only for the sake of separation.
It is most times merely
a place vibrating silently in the atmosphere,
among a dozen other things not worth thinking on,
the same color and breed as gunmetal.
Innocent like a bullet's round, balded
head, smooth and flat
and colder, somehow, than the environment
where it lays silent in its cold stew.
Your importance is unimportant. It may change
in a breath, spirited
by the wide and rabid wish for life,
but your manna sinks from the sky
like fish food. You may ask for it,
you may receive it. Or you may starve.
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Mortality and Nail Clippers
It is time for more formal acquaintance
between us, who spend weeks always
within reach and pondering one another.
I am a man, and there is little else
to say but that I’m much alike all men.
But you, my clippers, are a little under
two inches long, and comprised of three parts.
First, your pinched vowel body, second your lever,
and third the center tooth connecting the others
like a counselor, yawning precisely as a piston.
The light reflects fingerprints on your moderately
smudged chrome. Some grime is in your teeth.
Form under function, you've no place for the
swiveling blade of a nail file, but instead
a hole on the end opposite the more utilitarian
side, open as a hand for a keychain or a string.
The heavy lever is humpbacked, a depression set
for the comfort of an ignorant thumb, and
striations on the body; parallel lines
hugging each side, and on the inset depression
of the lever as well, for the sake of beauty.
But be that another man made you, and not
for beauty's sake alone—or solely for pleasure—
and being also that you didn’t spring
miraculously from the press of space or nature,
I have little more to say about you even
for your own sake, for I have spent on you already
more time than any power would grant me.
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Keith Wilson is an Affrilachian poet currently living in Burlington, KY. He is a graduate from Northern Kentucky University, with a BA in English.
Keith runs a personal blog on writing called The Robotto-Mulatto, which might be just about the best place to find him online.
Some of his publication credits include Appalachian Heritage, Muzzle, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Breadcrumb Scabs, The Driftwood Review and the anthology Spaces Between Us.
Find even more about Keith S. Wilson at his personal site, by clicking the link above. Photo of the author, courtesy of the author.