by Lesley Wheeler

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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Transporter or holodeck? Either I
have rematerialized incompletely
(sparkling shower of particles
dimmer) or this simulated city

has acquired a wobble, a tell.
Puffy-jacketed people
duck from awning to overhang
along Newbury Street wondering

if swan boats sail in the slanting
drizzle or a hand-held foam-coated
reservoir might suit better. Inside
the Church of the Covenant,

meanwhile, Tiffany glass
somehow glows against cold
puddingstone—how does a yoked
god’s robe luminesce by cloud,

its whiteness alive with ocher
and smoky motion? Gazing
at invisible sparrows, bracing
an overlarge hand on a rock,

he is surely transported too,
that blink of tropical foliage
behind him now, that dreamy blue,
and him thinking how, lord,

did I get to Boston? I drove,
theoretically, via the hospital
where nurses unhooked my mother
from catheter, from I.V.,

and handed her over. Moved
a bed downstairs, stocked her fridge
with little bottles of virtual
food optimistically labeled

Ensure for safety and, for power,
Boost. Counted and sealed
her pills into rows of labeled
oyster shells. Then, north,

as if stillness were heresy.
Back home a library of mountains
I never read. Mosaic rain
I smash right through.

Look at the god, good-looking,
how he looks at the ground,
willing it real, willing himself
to love where he hardly lives,

in his stupid human body,
an always ailing thing. Rather
the sparrow be true than cells
struggling to contain

unlikely radiance, and failing.
Compounding errors. The tumor
an index of poisons, every one
chiming as they transform her.

______________________________________________________________________

Lesley Wheeler is the author of the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds; the novel Unbecoming; and five books of poetry, most recently The State She’s In. Her poems and essays appear in such journals as Poetry, Ecotone, and Guernica, and she is Poetry Editor of Shenandoah.

by Lesley Wheeler

A man in a suit approached and touched my arm.
Would I pose in front of the merry-go-round?
I was thirteen, free for an hour, in the middle
of Paramus Park Mall, in America. I was America.
The man was leading a tour; the tourists spoke
no English. My English mother once said, Your sister
is beautiful, but you are reasonably attractive. She chose
my clothes, that day a blouse abuzz with tiny flowers,
a pink pleated skirt. Yes, I said, and sat on the bench.
Everybody smiled. My hair curled like orchid petals.
A malicious carousel horse whispered, Why
would they point their cameras at you? As if
you were pretty. This will be a story, I replied.
Of glass eyes, blind, that saw bloom in me.

______________________________________________________________

Lesley Wheeler’s newest books are The State She's In, her fifth poetry collection, and Unbecoming, her first novel. Her collection of hybrid essays, Taking Poetry Personally, will appear in 2021. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, Kenyon Review Online, Ecotone, Gettysburg Review, and other journals. Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, she lives in Virginia and blogs about poetry at lesleywheeler.org.

by Lesley Wheeler

Transporter or holodeck? Either I

have rematerialized incompletely

(sparkling shower of particles

dimmer) or this simulated city

has acquired a wobble, a tell.

Puffy-jacketed people

duck from awning to overhang

along Newbury Street wondering

if swan boats sail in the slanting

drizzle or a hand-held foam-coated

reservoir might suit better. Inside

the Church of the Covenant,

meanwhile, Tiffany glass

somehow glows against cold

puddingstone—how does a yoked

god’s robe luminesce by cloud,

its whiteness alive with ocher

and smoky motion? Gazing

at invisible sparrows, bracing

an overlarge hand on a rock,

he is surely transported too,

that blink of tropical foliage

behind him now, that dreamy blue,

and him thinking how, lord,

did I get to Boston? I drove,

theoretically, via the hospital

where nurses unhooked my mother

from catheter, from I.V.,

and handed her over. Moved

a bed downstairs, stocked her fridge

with little bottles of virtual

food optimistically labeled

Ensure for safety and, for power,

Boost. Counted and sealed

her pills into rows of labeled

oyster shells. Then, north,

as if stillness were heresy.

Back home a library of mountains

I never read. Mosaic rain

I smash right through.

Look at the god, good-looking,

how he looks at the ground,

willing it real, willing himself

to love where he hardly lives,

in his stupid human body,

an always ailing thing. Rather

the sparrow be true than cells

struggling to contain

unlikely radiance, and failing.

Compounding errors. The tumor

an index of poisons, every one

chiming as they transform her.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Lesley Wheeler is the author of four poetry collections, including Radioland and Heterotopia, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize; her recent chapbook, Propagation, was published by dancing girl press. Her poems and essays appear in Ecotone, Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. She is the Henry S. Fox Professor of English at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and blogs about poetry at lesleywheeler.org.