Allegra Wilson
—
First Movements
This is how I was born:
lifted out of a wound,
crying a solo.
Four years later,
tiny index finger learns to pull,
like an archer, on the string,
tension held with thumb,
pitch held by pinky tip.
Partitas played lonely in a wood-floored room
while it rained for days and days
without a name.
Notes dripped down
floor to ceiling windows, a poem printed
on the paper of each cigarette
my mother smoked at the typewriter.
Layer after layer of skin transforms
into calluses: core, mantle, crust.
Bow precise as a protractor.
Red star on my chin
proves devotion.
My left hand a scale, fingertips
ground glass, wallpaper sheet music,
right elbow standing in
for gravity.
Allegra Wilson is a mother, organizer, queer person, and writer living in Northern California. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review, Action, Spectacle, and BRAWL.
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