71. Realizing Lucy
Ronaldo Wilson
At the top of the hill, before the light gives way to the pine that fractures across the sky, and the farmhouse, opens its door to shadow, there is a signal.
It is not the dead bird, lying out flat and face down in the middle of the street, its brown belly on the pavement, cooled by the wind.
It is not in my chest, which opens up into sections as I breathe in the air that almost shocks me into falling face down as I climb the hill.
It is not the breath. It is not the sky, which I haven’t looked at, staring up at the mountains, which spreads down through the range up the curve.
It is not my knee, which seems at any moment will collapse into if nothing else,
the breaking beneath my legs, the final moment I push up, towards the end of the light.
There are shadows which cover the sign: SUN, painted in blue at the peak of the hill.
So, where, today, will I direct my anger?
Where will I turn, running past the women, who hover up the road, no cars,
crawling into their beers in the middle of the day?
Fat and White. I refuse to grow any fatter, or to not tan. This summer,
I burn off another self, sprinting up the high hill of my own making,
burning Kcals toward the peak of my own release. In this face, “What a view?” –
someone asking another. Was I supposed to seek something else into which to slip?
About this poem
“’71. Realizing Lucy’ is part of a series of 72 persona poems from my forthcoming collection, ‘Lucy 72,’ unveiling race as slippery vantage points: thin white woman/fat brown man, or plain girl/bulky boy, flash of light, rocks, streams, running, simmering, retreating. When I started this book in 2003, I took my cue from a number of works, including Cornelius Eady’s ‘Brutal Imagination,’ its animation of the figure of the imagined black man born to the murderess Susan Smith; Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man,’ its depiction of the racialized flow between the protagonist and Norton, somewhere between ‘a black amorphous thing’ and ‘a force’; and Adrian Piper’s ‘Mythic Being’ series, its conceptual polyvalent self as meditation/grid/ritual/analysis – after these, my Lucy, here, floats somewhere between subjectivity, desire and being.” – Ronaldo Wilson.
About Ronaldo Wilson
Ronaldo Wilson is the author of “Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other” (Counterpath Press, 2015). He teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Ronaldo Wilson. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
