By Keith S. Wilson
after D.H. Lawrence
shall i tell you, then, that we exist?
there came a light, blue and white careening.
the police like wailing angels
to bitter me.
and so this:
dark matter is hypothetical. know
that it cannot be seen
in the gunpowder of a flower,
in a worm that raisins on the concrete,
in a man that wills himself not to speak.
gags, oh gags.
for a shadow cannot breathe.
it deprives them of nothing. pride
is born in the black and then dies in it.
i hear our shadow, low treble
of the clasping of our hands.
dark matter is invisible.
we infer it: how light bends around a black body,
and still you do not see black halos, even here,
my having told you plainly where they are.
Keith S Wilson, "Black Matters" from Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love. Copyright © 2019 by Keith S Wilson. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
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