Patrick Wilcox

Annotating My High School Yearbook Photo

This is the photo

your grandmother will keep in her purse
until the winter she dies. You’ve halved your mind

into dropping out of school. You’ve stayed up

until dawn half-anxious in your homemade
entropy. This is the photo taken before

you would be found beaten breathless, weightless,

unwhole. In this photo light is breaking
in half in half in half again, a childhood

of choices synapsing toward what we want

and need and hope to steal
like starshine

too soon halved by dawn.

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Patrick Wilcox is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of Acta (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2023). He studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Central Missouri where he also was an Assistant Editor for Pleiades and Editor-in-Chief of Arcade. He is a three-time recipient of the David Baker Award for Poetry, the 2020 honorable mention of Ninth Letter’s Literary Award in Poetry and grand-prize winner of The MacGuffin’s Poet Hunt 26. His work has appeared in Southeast Review, Quarter After Eight, Gulf Coast and Copper Nickel, among others. He currently teaches English Language Arts at William Chrisman High School.