the blueshift journal
blueshift / ˈblo͞oˌSHift / noun
the displacement of the spectrum to shorter wavelengths in the light coming from distant celestial objects moving toward the observer.
FIELDNOTES
1
it helps to observe from a distance:
the field, for instance,
​
as a statement
the south has chosen to make,
the way whiteness too
is often rhetorical, as when an older student remarks
that in those beginning days
only he observed mlk’s holiday
and why was it that he did
while his black friends, working, did not
​
2
in physics dark matter isn't “made”
of anything. it's a free citizen
that passes
unburdened through the field, through itself,
through you—
​
3
sometimes love is a black dot
in a field
sometimes, suddenly
it is not.
​
4
or how can black be
the absence
of all color? take this cruiser. see the light strike blue off the car like copper
through a fountain
​
5
there is a difference between what is fair and what is just,
for instance,
it is fair
that i try
to love your skin even when it is not touching my own
​
6
whiteness is an alibi, the way the officer was like a steam-
liner
only I could see
​
7
inside where nothing shows I am of course not black
but that does not matter
to the field
​
8
some colors are indistinguishable
at night. put your hands behind your back
a different cop once asked me.
it was so sincere. he was so
polite
​
9
as a boy you learn to know the inside
without being required to feel it
as when, even now, I understand a bucket
or a hood
​
10
he asks my girlfriend not if she is white
since even in this light
what we are is obvious
but instead the sheriff offers some western
philosophy: ma’am he asks
are you here of your own free will
​
11
look at the word black
on the paper
& you will see a certain black, a kind,
a certainty,
or if you see nothing at all that of course
is a kind of black too
​
12
whiteness can be anything, even
hyperbole. try this:
sit in a field. try reading
andrew jackson’s quotes on liberty.
now force them away from him.
attribute them to the children of his slaves
​
13
by the road
my father showed me cotton
once
look at that
he said
​
​
​
​
​
“Through a series of poignantly observed field notes, Keith Wilson looks racial injustice and white supremacy in the eye and cracks open a world where difference can be re-imagined through physics, color and observation. While ‘whiteness sometimes is a form itself / of hyperbole’, he reveals that ‘dark matter isn’t ‘made’ of anything. It’s a free citizen / that passes / unburdened / through the field.’ Fieldnotes is a poem to revisit again and again. It is a testament to poetry’s visionary power to transform the way we see the world.”
— Jess X Chen, poetry judge