Poetry By Melody Wilson

Joseph Gage CC




I Believe in Music



The new record album finally arrived 
in the mail and I got the turntable going 

while my sister rolled a joint. We assumed 
our father smelled smoke when he walked in 

dangling a bottle of Smirnoff, but he just 
wanted to know if we understood what it was like 

to be hall-ow-ed. Did we? No, he said, 
we didn’t. And he was right, we had no earthly idea. 

Our mother was upstairs sleeping, two weeks 
since her double bypass and all the damp promises 

he made. And now we couldn’t parse the value 
of our daily bread. But by then 

we were laughing so hard there was no point 
continuing the lesson and he sloshed out the front door 

to recite about temptation from his perch 
among the ice plants. Temptation and forgiveness. 

And glory, always the glory, 
how it slips right through your hands.

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Melody Wilson’s poetry appears in Rust and Moth, One, B O D Y, Gyroscope, and other publications. Her first collection, Madre Dura, was the 2025 Paul Nemser Prize winner from Lily Poetry Review.  She lives in Portland, Oregon. Find more of her work at melodywilson.com.
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