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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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  • Social Commentaries

Poet Bio

Keith S. Wilson
Affrilachian poet Keith S. Wilson is the author of Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). Wilson is also a game designer with Resilient Games Studio. His work in game design includes “Once Upon a Tale,” a storytelling card game designed for Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in collaboration with the Field Museum of Chicago, and alternate reality games (ARGs) for the University of Chicago. He has worked with or taught new media with Kenyon College, the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium, and the University of Chicago. See More By This Poet

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