Discipline: Literature – poetry

Keith Wilson

Discipline: Literature – poetry
Region: Chicago, IL
MacDowell Fellowships: 2016
More: keithswilson.com

Fieldnotes

1

it helps to observe from a distance:
the field, for instance,

​as a statement

the south has chosen to make,
the way whiteness too
is often rhetorical, as when an older student remarks

that in those beginning days
only he observed mlk’s holiday

and why was it that he did
while his black friends, working, did not

2

in physics dark matter isn't “made”
of anything. it's a free citizen

that passes
unburdened through the field, through itself,

through you—

​3

sometimes love is a black dot
in a field

sometimes, suddenly
it is not.

​4

or how can black be

the absence
of all color? take this cruiser. see the light strike blue off the car like copper
through a fountain

5

there is a difference between what is fair and what is just,
for instance,

it is fair
that i try
to love your skin even when it is not touching my own

6

whiteness is an alibi, the way the officer was like a steam-
liner

only I could see

7

inside where nothing shows I am of course not black
but that does not matter

to the field

​8

some colors are indistinguishable
at night. put your hands behind your back

a different cop once asked me.
it was so sincere. he was so

polite

​9

as a boy you learn to know the inside
without being required to feel it

as when, even now, I understand a bucket
or a hood

​

10

he asks my girlfriend not if she is white
since even in this light

what we are is obvious

but instead the sheriff offers some western
philosophy: ma’am he asks
are you here of your own free will

11

look at the word black
on the paper
& you will see a certain black, a kind,

a certainty,

or if you see nothing at all that of course
is a kind of black too

​12

whiteness can be anything, even
hyperbole. try this:

sit in a field. try reading

andrew jackson’s quotes on liberty.
now force them away from him.
attribute them to the children of his slaves

13

by the road
my father showed me cotton
once

look at that
he said

fieldnotes

Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, Affrilachian poet, Cave Canem fellow, and graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. He serves as assistant poetry editor at Four Way Review and digital media editor and Web consultant at Obsidian Journal. He has received three scholarships from Bread Loaf as well as scholarships from MacDowell, Millay Colony, Poetry by the Sea, Ucross, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Chicago State University. Wilson's poetry has been published in two chapbooks: Generation Oz (Finishing Line Press) and Kindermeal (Imaginary Friend Press).

His work in game design includes A Day in the Life (Game Changer Chicago), a narrative decision-making game that has players inhabit the life of a high school student in a surreal repeating day of school, and the game Black Box (Game Changer Chicago), a roleplaying game involving a high school student entering a shadow version of Chicago in order to fight dark elves and learn about AP biology subjects. He has worked with The Field Museum and Adler Planetarium.

Wilson's poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies and has appeared or is appearing in the following journals: Poetry, Adroit Journal, Narrative, 32 Poems, Rhino, Anti-, Muzzle, Blueshift Journal, and Vinyl. Additionally, he has had poems nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award.

Studios

Garland

Keith Wilson worked in the Garland studio.

Marian MacDowell and friends originally named this studio in memory of Anna Baetz, the nurse who helped care for Edward MacDowell in the waning years of his life. With generous support from the Garland family, the studio was renovated in 2013 and renamed the Peter and Mary Garland Studio. The inward opening, diamond-pane windows were replaced…

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