She seats them at a round table, handing out napkins
in blue, yellow, green, red; serves them sparkling water,
the season’s first berries, little sandwiches made
with whole wheat.  Old friends, they know when to applaud, what
to avoid, where the wandering scars of the past
forty years are likely to rest.  The ham is lowfat;. 
Lion’s fighting cholesterol.  Tinman’s new book
is in its second printing . . . has anyone heard
from the wiz?  Scarecrow is smiling, licking crumbs from
his fingers as she brings out the coffee
and cake.  Which of them mentions the house?

So many tornados have since ripped through their lives,
scattering straw, tearing off tin, leaving more than
the guilty crushed by debris dropped in the wrong place--
that first wind’s a comfort now, danger survived.
The retelling of bricks leads them down that old road,
one to the other, familiar and safe.  Dorothy
tucks up her bare feet beneath her full skirt,
happy with sunshine, her friends and the cake.

Eileen Wilks 2/03

or, “Why Do You Write Those Little Books, Anyway?”

I’m at the airport, waiting to board.
Windows chop up my view,
glass teeth taking right-angled bites
of the landscape.  They spit out

the sunlight in neat parallels,
light bites burning
the brown-on-brown carpet.
Voices converge here like streams

floating into the river--
petals and sticks and dead
baby birds, all fall into the air-
port.  My plane takes off.

Pressure pushes my ears
into my head,
compacting the sound
of the wings and the props

and the voices—all of us boarded,
surrendered together
to this hollow cigar
these cubits of metal-wrapped air –

cribb’d, cabin’d, confine’d
and flying at ten thousand feet.

EM Wilks 2/28/98

With black Magic Marker I draw
a line along my jaw, connect
my throat and eye, re-curve my cheek
in certain black, surprise my sight
and swing the shiny ink across
the air.  In gleaming arcs I draw

the sharp, delineating marks
that God left out--cut the soft, tough
air with acrid black, bind my sight
to narrow slag, fused and vitrified--
the dark leftovers after ore's
removed from rock.  I'll mark a cut

connecting root to red to mud,
trace the void that webs between
my cells, your selves, and all that's else,
coil my reply in denser dark
and breath my air into the crack
that opens when I draw in black.

EMW 9/23/93

. . . the sons of Anak, which come of giants:  and we were in
our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Numbers 13:33

We sometimes see giants striding
here on the flatlands.  More often at night--
a swift occlusion of stars, a gliding

dark bulk between earth and sky.  One quick sight,
then off the edge of the world and gone,
here on the flatlands, swallowed by night.

Mostly, the silent thunder of their song
is distant, uneasy to hear before
they're off the edge of the world and gone

and by day the sight of them is more
a troubling of the air than fact.  Their mass
is distant, uneasy to bear before

they pass.  At times they come quite close and cast
a wind that tugs our hair and stings our skin--
a troubling of the air and facts, the vast

remembered breath of giants.  Here, where I live
we sometimes see giants striding,
a swift occlusion of stars, a gliding
wind that tugs our memory and stings our skin.

EMWilks 10/3/93

After eating the words
I crack the spine of your book
to suck out the marrow, then rock back
on my hard, dirty heels, tossing the bones
on the stone at my feet.  Smoke from my fire
drifts out the mouth of the cave.  The flames
lick my greasy face red, and I hear
my other name called
by the wildness howling
outside in the dark.

EMW  5/12/92