Two After Mike Wilson, by B.J. Wilson

Mixed Media, by Mike Wilson (USA) contemporary

Mixed Media
 
We’re listening to Shabazz Palaces, my brother drawing from a photo I took earlier with my phone: aimed up, zoomed in, then slid across a high rise right before dark. Lights along the strip that came on too, neon and jagged across the screen.
 
Level with the skyline, ninth floor, sun finally set, I now see that the city’s a whole suite of high rises: cylinders with warm windows wrapped around them the way the towers wrap around us. These lines are like the ones from the piece that you bought, he says, and These are your colours: pink & yellow & blue, some smeared, his hands heavy with pastels.
 
Already done. Which is why he animates for a living, making rigs move. I work best like this late at night now, he says, and This is something I’ve never drawn before, then Let’s call it: “Vancouver Night,” no, yeh: “Vancouver Night with You.”
​

Self Portrait with a TV, by Mike Wilson (USA) contemporary

Self Portrait with a TV 
 
1.
 
The figure looking back from inside the screen
holds up his gamepad and pretends to play— 
my younger brother at about fifteen 
before a crusted loveseat tugged up to his room.
The background blends gray with nauseous green 
but still allows enough light for a nude--
bare chest, swim trunks, the legs partly removed,
face blurred as if to mask what he needed to say.
 
2.
 
Before the screen, his foot is tinted peach,
his towel’s stripes curving like still-life fruit--
a twist of lemon peel, blue rug beneath
the console’s purple glow, but despite his suit
he looks like a ghost behind a windowpane,
no one listening to him say: I’m not playing. 
​
B.J. Wilson

B.J. Wilson is the author of two poetry collections, Naming the Trees (The Main Street Rag, 2021) and Tuckasee (Finishing Line Press, 2020). His work has appeared in The Rappahonnock Review, The Blue Mountain Review, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. He holds a writing fellowship from The Hambidge Center, an MFA from the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University, and a Pushcart Prize nomination for his poetry. Originally a visual artist, B.J. realized his brother was much better, so now he just writes. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, his hometown.