print previewback JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS
Incarnate
Balm: as in a handsaw taken
to dying branches; my mother
when she prayed us cut the air
off, those final gasps the purest
she’d ever known; as in that time
the doe the dogs left living by a thread
leaned that thread into our bullet;
as in the unnamed herbs my wife’s
grandmother swears held her head
sweaty & adolescent, but upright,
astral, cradled by the only kind of arms
the internment camp had to offer, that
child-size tea set she smuggled through
a half-century’s worth of indignities
that now rests on our mantle, chipped
from our own children’s violent whims,
themselves the balm, those missing
wedges, those unspoken memories;
as in the aged neighbor who just handed
me two rolls of toilet paper because loss
means something different when the whole
boat is sinking; as in my gratitude, my selfish
gratitude for everything I haven’t had to steal,
the shreds of light that makes this loving less a cage. 