Appaloosa

.

Nothing spooks the horses into flight

like inertia. Not lightning, barn fire.

Not the whips we take to their sides

to drive them forward. There’s always

room for a bit more suffering, right?

But something profound happens,

mid-field, multi-colored living field,

when the fences hold & the light steadies.

Calm, unusable day leaves nothing for night

……………………………………………………… to undo.

Like my brother so utterly broken by

our unbroken world, carving escape

tunnels into his veins, breaking into

our house to steal what he already owns.

Like my ten-year-old body burrowing

beneath a fence six inches from the gate.

Like my mother, staring out the kitchen

window all day, cleaning the last crumbs

of her dreams from our plates.

Like the horses, seduced closer to our open

palms with carrots & promises: that someday

we will wild them again, beat & break them…

………………………………………………………. anything.

.

.

A Jar to Keep the Earth In

.

You unscrew the lid like a book

about the parts of the body no one

taught you in school. Terrifying,

alluring, all this potable water

& the filthy scent of pine.

Thigh high grass resilient enough for a person

to pass through without fearing return.

Animals going about the busywork

of savagery without sin. These train tracks

that divide our neighborhoods into

already and not-yet given up on

obscured in dandelions & wild greens.

The ash beneath it all both your brother’s

& not. & it doesn’t matter

the light frenzies half a childhood

then leaves the rest to night. Moonless,

undrinkable night.

For a moment, as you let the earth breathe,

snowfall that doesn’t resemble a boy’s outline

on the sidewalk in front of your house

before it rains.



Photo by Shawn Records.

John Sibley Williams is the author of As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Disinheritance, and Controlled Hallucinations. A nineteen-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a literary agent. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Shawn Records has work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Light Work, and the Portland Art Museum, among others. His work has been shown widely, including two solo exhibitions at Blue Sky Gallery and group exhibitions at MoCP, INOVA, Newspace Center for Photography, Photo Center Northwest, and many others.  His editorial clients have included The New York Times Magazine, Vice, LeMonde’s M, Travel & Leisure, Dwell, and many other. He’s based in Portland, Oregon.