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By Phillip B. Williams

A storm and so a gift.
       Its swift approach
             lifts gravel from the road.
A fence is flattened in
       the course of   the storm’s
             worse attempt at language —
thunder’s umbrage. A tree
       is torn apart,
             blown upward through a bedroom
window. A boy winnows
       through the pile
             of shards for the sharpest parts
from the blown-apart
       glass. He has
             a bag that holds found edges
jagged as a stag’s
       horns or smooth as
             a single pane smashed into
smaller panes that he sticks
       his hand into
             to make blood web across
his ache-less skin flexing
       like fish gills
             O-lipped for a scream
it cannot make.
       He wants to feel
             what his friends have felt,
the slant of fear on their faces
       he could never
             recreate, his body configured
without pain. When his skin’s
       pouting welts
             don’t rake a whimper
from his mouth, he runs
       outside, arms up
             for the storm, aluminum
baseball bat held out
       to the sky
            until lightning with an electric
tongue makes his viscera
       luminescent;
             the boy’s first word for pain
       is the light’s
             new word for home.


Source: Poetry (November 2013)

  • Arts & Sciences
  • Living
  • Nature

Poet Bio

Phillip B. Williams
Phillip B. Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. He is a Cave Canem graduate and the poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry. Williams is currently a Chancellor’s Graduate fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is completing an MFA in creative writing. See More By This Poet

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