A Vanity of Wishes

A Vanity of Wishes Carl Phillips (bio) To take everything back, reverse the limbs turned out outrageous, the breath foundering. To wake from where flesh— like every other road there— was hard, lasting. And find it dream—and the dreaming, enough. To rise full from the long table of example: the double stags, gutted, skinned, dressed— all that meat, at last, rendered useful; the upturned brace of pheasant, still struggling, still knowing dimly, more dimly, darkly the gamekeeper’s kid-hugged fist. To lie naked, down, and squired, to either side a lord gone stiff and restive in full court dress. To steer, [End Page 193] on sootless, drama-less wings those undeeded acres between seduce and persuade. O never to get nor have got there. To thirst gothically, to want— like a spire. Carl Phillips Carl Phillips is the author of In the Blood, which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, and Cortége, a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is an associate professor of English and African and African-American Studies at Washington University (St. Louis), where he directs the Creative Writing Program. Copyright © 1998 Charles H. Rowell

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