On the road that opensto mountains and snow,away from the houses crampedin their quarters like too many socksin a drawer, the eye of the eyeinside of me opens.All the years of childrenI loved and fearedwould kill me.Not their brightnessor the electric thrill of their skinnext to mine, not even the cryingthat pried me from sleepbut the dormancy of a wildinner life I loved and knew well.To survive, it left me. I cared thenfor other wild things. Now in silenceit’s returning. I turn a cornerto a doe and two fawns. I know you. I toolive like this. The bodyand the spirit are a bicycleyou ride carefullyand uphilland for how long?
So Long
Sunni Brown Wilkinson
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“So Long” From RODEO: by Sunni Brown Wilkinson.
Published by Autumn House Press on April 22, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Sunni Brown Wilkinson.
“So Long” first published in SWWIM.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Sunni Brown Wilkinson is a poet and essayist. Her newest book, Rodeo, was selected by Patricia Smith as winner of the 2024 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published by Autumn House Press. Other books are The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press) and The Ache & The Wing (winner of the Sundress Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has also been awarded New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Prize, and the Sherwin Howard Award. She teaches at Weber State University and lives in northern Utah with her husband and three sons.
Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s second full-length is a collection of formalist poetry—part ode, part elegy—and serves as a heartfelt journey in overcoming grief and falling back in love with the world.
“Why can’t Jesus / come already? We’re a mess.” Indeed, Rodeo is that brand of backslap—furious and cunning and deftly crafted, by no means reluctant to say the whispered stuff out loud. This book rises above a tough and formidable field simply by not needing to rise at all—the poet’s wry and revelatory stanzas ride high through minefields of love and heart-numbing loss before accompanying the reader on, in the poet’s own words, “a slow descent into the heart of the world.”
—Patricia Smith, Prize Judge and author of Unshuttered
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