Poetry

Shaving Oedipus' Reflection
​by Allen Wilson
​Gazing into the mirror
at that curious duck
wabbit drawing me
forward; this isn’t
Wittgenstein and his
perplexing androgyny
but my father and me
locked in an eternal
stare down the latest
salvo just perpetrated
on my driver license;
Lou Reed’s “Harry’s
Circumcision” drifts
into my ear; a guy
fed up staring at his face
in the mirror every day
and the lifetime baggage
it dredges up takes the razor
slices himself a new one;
I bleed with him, but
this one’s bigger than
Harry Lou me our fathers
bathroom mirrors
my driver license--
Wittgenstein even:
it’s about destroying
our fathers our
selves as proxies
​NOTE: The ambiguous image above, by an unknown artist, is from a page of Fliegende Blätter, a German humor magazine (1892). It is the first known rendition of the rabbit-duck illusion.
About Allen Wilson
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Allen Wilson has, by turn, been a dishwasher, farm laborer, stock clerk, piano teacher, telephone salesman, court clerk, statistical typist, administrative assistant, construction estimator, grant writer, consultant to public and private non-profit organizations, executive director, and contract administrator. He’s a graduate of San Francisco State University (MA Humanities, 1970), married more than 50 years, has an adult daughter, is currently semi-retired trying to figure out what he wants to do when or if he grows up. He writes poetry because that’s what the voices in his head tell him to do.
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​The Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual arts by members of OLLI at SF State.
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​The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University​ provides material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff.