Caki Wilkinson

This Is the Town Wynona Built

To call the thing a replica would be misleading. There are omissions, twists. The scale is off. Picture Wynona in a mirror holding up a nature shot. That’s more like it. How it started, anyway. She said yes to the cow patties, no to the cows, yes to the silos and fences. She said no to the high school and museum and gym, yes to the two best beauty shops; no to the succulents, most types of moss, but yes and yes again to rocks—an impressive array of sizes and formations, crags and pebbles, slabs and cliffs. She scrapped the train but kept the tracks, snuffed stars to fit the orrery—how else to account for the sky, empty space? She picked the crops, no need for fields, and set each table with a meal but left the dining rooms implied. She drew the line at supers, cousins-once-removed, love letters, pills, and knickknack shelves. This cleared a space for her small self, who has, Wynona must concede, her own small sense of style. There are no homes. Homes take awhile.

 

 

 

Caki Wilkinson is the author of the poetry collection Circles Where the Head Should Be (UNT Press, 2011), which won the 2010 Vassar Miller Prize. Her second collection won the Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award and is forthcoming from Persea Books in 2014.