Poetry
Losing My Religion JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS
Copper echoes of church bells; a whole town goes black & goes white an hour every Sunday. Material & imagined skies burn together. The burning smells like bread rising, like a creature comfort we’ll take for granted until this god too abandons us. Like all fathers. & the hand-me-down ironworks not so distant we can fail to hear its hum inviting us in. We’ll try
or pretend to try to find roads our fathers have never trudged & might disown us for taking. We’ll marry our high school sweethearts, build a brand new house a half-mile from our parents, call it starting over again. & in heaven still that war that is not our war calling our names. A bird that is not a dove burdened by our branch.
Say We’re Descended JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS
from the sky. Say the penned-in horses trembling with dreams of escape look nothing like us. Say our violences are meant to beat the song out of each other, that what we’ve killed is most likely not dead, at least not forever. If there’s such a thing as forever, say we’re guaranteed some welllit corner of it, that everything vanishes when not standing directly before us. Before us, say no light or darkness or horses or sky existed. Even the gods need something to believe in. When I stay up all night watching the city undress, say I’m the one suddenly naked, exposed, totally unprotected from eden.
martm © 123RF.com
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