Category: Phillip B. Williams

by Phillip B. Williams

My horse, my stallion, I ride you unprivate

through whispery villages. Falter not

from their gossip that you were once a man

mimicking an animal’s affectionless muscle

to become more man. Bury beneath

your hooves’ hopscotch these upright beasts

caught in night’s sleight of hand branding omen

in their hair and meat. Watch boys be forced

into men by men who’ve forgotten their own

forcing. Haloes of flies bite the boymen as mules

slobber through wheezy chaff and bridle in a district

of hands. Gaze of denotation, of well-bred

taxidermy, of ghouls misnamed Mandingo

till the weight of their manhood stuck

like a mannerism. Is it loving men that removes

my manacled mouth, mutes my mule dick’s howl

as the gelding knife lands? In this land manicured

by manure and blood, hyacinth and bullets, the tool

and the temper rule while the suicides of sons

feed the softened earth beneath our stampede.

I, too, could learn to neigh and drop dead in this

claustrophobic strobe of fireflies at my flank.

Some beasts were trained to eat their own. Some

were trained to flinch at their own reflections.

from Thief in the InteriorFind more by Phillip B. Williams at the library

Copyright © 2016 Phillip B. Williams
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Phillip B. Williams

Resist, don’t: the difference between what one thinks

the magnolias say—branches applauding

some animal act below—and what

they actually say…nothing

between us can

we prepare for, only postpone. I’ve learned

to plead and to please, another difference.

~

Turn your face that way where light no more

transfigures you than darkness makes a need for

transfiguration. Yes, the scar above your eye.

Blood had dropped from the wound, a curtain.

But I believe we are, inside, all blue, you said.

Listen, neither we nor blue make sky.

The earth spins and we, utterly, are spun.

from Thief in the InteriorFind more by Phillip B. Williams at the library

Copyright © 2016 Phillip B. Williams
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Phillip B. Williams

Help me distinguish between approaching blizzard

and his breath against my ear, causing my skin

to whistle like a blade of grass. Please, help me keep

my mind at ease when he trembles beneath me, cold-

hot and wet, wet all over. The sheets have been

soaked and wrung and bleached. The carpet

vacuumed, the kitchen floor swept. God, help me keep

a clean home, keep the roaches’ running prayers

from competing with my own, keep the rats

from gnawing on the bread with filth and squeak.

Plastic won’t keep ice crystals from making

a second pane over the window, won’t keep

the don’t-give-a-damn cold from coming in

and lingering beneath our feet. Give me feet

that can sing, that can sing all over this floor

like a drum battalion, stomp out the pests

and their late night coitus, stomp out winter

crawling from beneath the floorboard, stomp out

the fever pouring from his never-dry back.

I want to heal like You do. God, let me walk on water.

from Thief in the InteriorFind more by Phillip B. Williams at the library

Copyright © 2016 Phillip B. Williams
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Phillip B. Williams

as if it were a scene made up by my need

for a city, viaducts July-sweating sweat not

mine as the city is no longer mine, was never,

but it holds me near to its metallic, junkyard

pasture and junkie song so hollow it’s a hall

I dare not walk through, this tragic place

wherefrom the people with my face fall.

Wherefrom fall all the architectures I am

I say are my people’s people and my people

whose houses tremble as thunderous bass passes.

The blacktopped roads sop up heat for double

Dutch feet to greet, rope slapped down

by a child’s hand. I used to know her name.

It is only a dream of trees, their propeller seeds

blown west through batches of weeds crocheted

yellow-green with dandelions and cigarette butts

once erect from a mouth stressed over rent due,

dried spit the tincture of wait and liquor stores.

Often I am permitted to return to this city

as if it were a gift for which I forgot the means

to augur into clarity, always wrapped in cool violence,

neighbors’ frowns cauterized into cul-de-sacs,

omen outcasting what lives to give relief.

from Thief in the InteriorFind more by Phillip B. Williams at the library

Copyright © 2016 Phillip B. Williams
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.