human hours by John Sibley Williams
another lung collapses : soot
blackens an already un-
lit interior : somewhere
between flight & fall a man
i’ll eventually resemble
once i’ve scrubbed these
stars from my eyes breaks
down at a kitchen table
between generations that
struggle to want to hold him
: too many birds to count
constellate on the naked
branch outside : outside he
interrogates a winter wood
pile with an axe that fails
to split his questions open
into answers : no into maybe
into just this once into please :
my children cut & paste his name
on a poorly folded paper crane
& dance it wildly in the cigar-
heavy air : a body’s length away
a body begins its thinning : music
from a tinfoil antenna holds back
our silence : sweeps the static up
in its mighty arms & sways it
across the lawn : shallow prints :
deepening snow : that wartime frigate
every night he weeps over : privately :
that’s reached us as flame & fist :
sets out to bloody or save another
country : & the axe too heavy to lift
& the crane with his name beating itself
against the window to rejoin the birds outside
John Sibley Williams is the author of nine 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).). His book Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming in translated form by the Portuguese press do lado esquerdo. A twenty-seven-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.
Art by Andy K. Smith