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  • The Verdict:Beauty First without Blame.
  • Erik James Wilbur (bio)

Yesterday I saw you truefrom a barstool,to the taste of oak & dull gasolinechased with sweet, stale middle-America.

Four lonely lampsspaced        evenly        over        rosewoodhung like geese on meat hooks,and glowed like ripe pomegranates still dressed in morning rain. [End Page 5]

With clemency,they whispered pallid light throughshackled eyes.

In a nervous glass,brazen bits of carbon slippedup & outwith vulgar grace.

And I recalled you,trulybetter in your Sunday best:a pistol-grip-ivory blouse, an olive (branch) a-line skirt,the color of flickering candlelight held up & back by a peacock brooch,the color of October, 1886,the color of leaves in Leviticus.A semblance of a specter in lace and linen,

You must have been somewhere fast asleep. [End Page 6]

Erik James Wilbur

Erik James Wilbur feels most at home in Sacramento, California's midtown district. But in 2009, he met his wife and, making an uncharacteristically impulsive decision, moved away from there to be with her. He is currently studying English as an undergraduate at San Diego State University. He has inherited a love of the outdoors from his father, and takes every opportunity to head up into the Sierra Nevada to channel the ghost of John Muir. An archer, fisherman, and bicycle enthusiast, he has also been known to shamelessly spend an entire day in his cluttered studio apartment watching documentaries, or Aaron Sorkin teledramas. After he graduates, he plans to pursue an MFA in creative writing.

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