Virgil Kills

Artist, academic, and poet Wilson (Poems of the Black Object) explores an artist’s identity and desire in this revelatory collection. The series of vignettes generally read like an episodic novel and follows Virgil, a queer, Black Filipino mixed-race man, from New York to San Francisco, Berlin, Western Massachusetts, Guam, and Tennessee as he visits lovers (their nicknames include “Clean,” “Stream,” “Butch,” and “Grey Chest Hair Patch”), makes his art, and writes during the “OrangeBLOWHOLE” Trump presidency. In “The Conversation,” which takes the form of an interview, Virgil says his negotiations with how he’s perceived and how he identifies feel like “splitting yourself from the core of who you think you are.” In “Dream Collaged with Reality,” fellow spa-goer “SingedheadBear” praises Trump, and Virgil retreats from a dead-end conversation with the man to ruminate on racial divisions. Throughout, Wilson offers keen insights on tensions between corporeality and subjectivity, between the individual and socially constructed identity, and between dreams and reality. This adds up to a nuanced portrait of an artist mining his own life for material. (May)