John S. Williams
John is a poet and book publicist residing in Portland, OR. He has a previous
MA in Writing and presently studies Book Publishing at Portland State
University, where he serves as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and
publicist for Three Muses Press. His poetry was nominated for the 2009
Pushcart Prize, and his debut chapbook, A Pure River, was published in
2010 by The Last Automat Press. Some of his over 100 previous or
upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, Rosebud, Ellipsis,
Flint Hills Review, Euphony, Open Letters, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The
Journal, Hawaii Review, Cutthroat, The Furnace Review, Red Wheelbarrow,
Aries, and River Oak Review.
MA in Writing and presently studies Book Publishing at Portland State
University, where he serves as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and
publicist for Three Muses Press. His poetry was nominated for the 2009
Pushcart Prize, and his debut chapbook, A Pure River, was published in
2010 by The Last Automat Press. Some of his over 100 previous or
upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, Rosebud, Ellipsis,
Flint Hills Review, Euphony, Open Letters, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The
Journal, Hawaii Review, Cutthroat, The Furnace Review, Red Wheelbarrow,
Aries, and River Oak Review.
A Village South of the River
We live secluded beneath the smokestacks and power lines
fueling a city, but it’s the land south of the river,
where the slightest rains overflow each bank
and threaten the meadow flowers and horses,
I entrust to you.
You who open windows for the storm
and speak of the sea in terms of herring caught,
who vanish into poetry, histories, and other fictions
to futilely escape self-meditation,
who begin a new conversation
two lines before completing the first,
like me who writes of you
and already feels the silent weight
following the last word.
A bridge built of our ribs arcs over the water.
You are the only path.
The vast circuitry of pure energy overhead
sizzling well past midnight , when we sleep
like stacked stones and no longer question
what keeps houses lit within.
My heart is a village
where the sun is burning out
but never quite extinguishes.
It lies south of the Danube
and is forever flooding.
As we rain together,
stripping the bark from the sun,
warring the clouds,
I spit out the stones long crammed in my mouth
and, again with meek voice and destination,
walk upon them, along the entire path,
remaining bone dry.
Hymn Similar to Yesterday’s
Some clear night from the sleeping car
Prague blooms along the window like potted begonias,
uprooted from earth and squeezed into a diminutive space.
What by day seemed a garden,
the unreason of trains, architectures,
juggled languages and literatures,
the unbalance of river and bridge,
is suddenly complacent, any city,
when seeded in the geometric rows of light
a clear night offers to compensate.
As if, a dying man, it cannot pass
an hour silently and black.
As if, a poet, the darkness is not enough.
In the darkest moments before dawn
we move like paper away,
almost blank, uncertain what first word
to best break the stillness.
The night train cranking, coughing,
battling itself metal upon metal,
while the loud voice of the city
echoes into nothing
and something from before returns
polished, pawned by gypsies as new,
and something else born of man
light-pricks the hallow, unfurling pasture.
Rails West
They run across the country nonetheless.
Fold aside the wild knee-high grass,
sun-singed to root and still growing, untouched.
Touch them. Unearth in fisted clumps
what spreads over abandoned attempts at migration.
Expose at least to yourself
the mineral certainty of clipped wings,
the rail’s ghost vibrations as vocal as before
though pitched deeper, the teacher’s lessons
substantiated by experience but having experienced
doomed to gesture with shaky hands.
After a while even the sun loses formality,
walks the house naked, climbs into bed
a stranger. The dust never settles.
But a mile away from its old language-
coughing black plumes, the whining of steel
on its way somewhere and back-
runs parallel a road you cannot follow to its end.
O how it irks you that feet can only take you so far,
that wandering never winds you astray,
and to reach the next town, to speak in terms of destination,
you must pursue a bright, straight line,
paved and painted yearly to speed your way
or a vast network of steel
raised high above the feral grass.
Baltic Covenant
When this growling Baltic bay simmers,
a sudden quiet laves those wounds
an ink-black sky rewrites, in different tongues
so we suffer them each time anew.
For a moment, world hushes
and water exposes the constellations
clouds mask in their vague-shaped
uncertainties, universes reflected
below the surface, codified amongst shell and pebble.
An order revealed.
The soul flown
and returned a kempt, Baroque garden,
where each flower its purpose,
each tide accountable
to the entire sea’s mood.
Aegean Melancholy
How vain the butcher’s cleaver
and the almost smile left on a pig’s bled face,
ears dried and fed to dogs,
how after this feast still they look up
and bay at the octopuses swaying like nooses,
moon far above and deaf,
sea listening to itself, sleepless,
and the mallet pounding fleshes
into square disks for tomorrow.
Cities roll in, replace each other,
retain peoples much as air clings to salt,
but trade names, architectures.
Little changes inside maps,
inside shops or soldiers’ eyes,
even as languages peek-a-boo through books,
humble masks worn to poeticize
the little killings so chronicled as wonderment,
our tourisms into genocide
by bloodied tile floor or pen.
How vain I am
to think I clothe the naked’s breath.
Nobody speaks a tongue
that can reach another’s soul.
Nobody speaks blood
while watching their own
dance safely in veins,
watching the dogs slobber and growl
over any flesh hanging out of reach,
watching the sea lick clean
the meager scraps we’ve left it to swallow or choke.
We live secluded beneath the smokestacks and power lines
fueling a city, but it’s the land south of the river,
where the slightest rains overflow each bank
and threaten the meadow flowers and horses,
I entrust to you.
You who open windows for the storm
and speak of the sea in terms of herring caught,
who vanish into poetry, histories, and other fictions
to futilely escape self-meditation,
who begin a new conversation
two lines before completing the first,
like me who writes of you
and already feels the silent weight
following the last word.
A bridge built of our ribs arcs over the water.
You are the only path.
The vast circuitry of pure energy overhead
sizzling well past midnight , when we sleep
like stacked stones and no longer question
what keeps houses lit within.
My heart is a village
where the sun is burning out
but never quite extinguishes.
It lies south of the Danube
and is forever flooding.
As we rain together,
stripping the bark from the sun,
warring the clouds,
I spit out the stones long crammed in my mouth
and, again with meek voice and destination,
walk upon them, along the entire path,
remaining bone dry.
Hymn Similar to Yesterday’s
Some clear night from the sleeping car
Prague blooms along the window like potted begonias,
uprooted from earth and squeezed into a diminutive space.
What by day seemed a garden,
the unreason of trains, architectures,
juggled languages and literatures,
the unbalance of river and bridge,
is suddenly complacent, any city,
when seeded in the geometric rows of light
a clear night offers to compensate.
As if, a dying man, it cannot pass
an hour silently and black.
As if, a poet, the darkness is not enough.
In the darkest moments before dawn
we move like paper away,
almost blank, uncertain what first word
to best break the stillness.
The night train cranking, coughing,
battling itself metal upon metal,
while the loud voice of the city
echoes into nothing
and something from before returns
polished, pawned by gypsies as new,
and something else born of man
light-pricks the hallow, unfurling pasture.
Rails West
They run across the country nonetheless.
Fold aside the wild knee-high grass,
sun-singed to root and still growing, untouched.
Touch them. Unearth in fisted clumps
what spreads over abandoned attempts at migration.
Expose at least to yourself
the mineral certainty of clipped wings,
the rail’s ghost vibrations as vocal as before
though pitched deeper, the teacher’s lessons
substantiated by experience but having experienced
doomed to gesture with shaky hands.
After a while even the sun loses formality,
walks the house naked, climbs into bed
a stranger. The dust never settles.
But a mile away from its old language-
coughing black plumes, the whining of steel
on its way somewhere and back-
runs parallel a road you cannot follow to its end.
O how it irks you that feet can only take you so far,
that wandering never winds you astray,
and to reach the next town, to speak in terms of destination,
you must pursue a bright, straight line,
paved and painted yearly to speed your way
or a vast network of steel
raised high above the feral grass.
Baltic Covenant
When this growling Baltic bay simmers,
a sudden quiet laves those wounds
an ink-black sky rewrites, in different tongues
so we suffer them each time anew.
For a moment, world hushes
and water exposes the constellations
clouds mask in their vague-shaped
uncertainties, universes reflected
below the surface, codified amongst shell and pebble.
An order revealed.
The soul flown
and returned a kempt, Baroque garden,
where each flower its purpose,
each tide accountable
to the entire sea’s mood.
Aegean Melancholy
How vain the butcher’s cleaver
and the almost smile left on a pig’s bled face,
ears dried and fed to dogs,
how after this feast still they look up
and bay at the octopuses swaying like nooses,
moon far above and deaf,
sea listening to itself, sleepless,
and the mallet pounding fleshes
into square disks for tomorrow.
Cities roll in, replace each other,
retain peoples much as air clings to salt,
but trade names, architectures.
Little changes inside maps,
inside shops or soldiers’ eyes,
even as languages peek-a-boo through books,
humble masks worn to poeticize
the little killings so chronicled as wonderment,
our tourisms into genocide
by bloodied tile floor or pen.
How vain I am
to think I clothe the naked’s breath.
Nobody speaks a tongue
that can reach another’s soul.
Nobody speaks blood
while watching their own
dance safely in veins,
watching the dogs slobber and growl
over any flesh hanging out of reach,
watching the sea lick clean
the meager scraps we’ve left it to swallow or choke.
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