—Delray, Detroit, 2014
From this fourth story window I see
power lines eating sky, gray awnings
blocking all light from the recesses.
All neon-like; the entirety of night is
captured, drowned in inch-deep
puddles. A child half-buried in tarp,
asleep between walls. Walls buried
up to their necks in empty shelves.
Overabundance of place. & scarcity
of the same. Self-interrogations. Sag
& soot. A man older than my father
was when he died is converting fire
hydrants to Jesus. & it seems to be
working; amen. No fire has stuck
around long enough to catch. There
is a boarded-up church just out of
reach, a weed-choked stone temple
that can’t shake off its steeple. Like
soggy piñatas, stars just hang there,
slashed open, all the sweetness torn
out. Like a barren womb. Like some
–thing we must learn the worth of
through trial & error. Like waiting
for a god or steamroller to speak up
and rephrase us.
John Sibley Williams is the author of seven poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award), The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). A twenty-six-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. Previous publishing credits include Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and TriQuarterly.
