Imprint
by John Sibley Williams
There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting
as the imprint of an oar upon the water.
—Kate Chopin
For example: breath. For example: a father.
Or dawn chewing up fireflies, raking the stars
down to campfire ash. The child you’ll spend longer
grieving than raising, the sea’s
clumsy mirror, the churchlessness of raw earth.
For example: that inevitable
first footprint sunk into the riverclay of an un-
mapped country. Heaven or hell or just another
Sunday wandering the wild outskirts of a fenceless
field. How everything is entirely unknowable
until ripped from the earth & tasted. Spit back, sometimes life back into imaginary dead things. My hands, for example. 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), Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize, 2019), Disinheritance, and Controlled Hallucinations. A twenty-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a freelance poetry editor and literary agent. Previous publishing credits include: Yale Review, North American Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Review, Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, Saranac Review, Atlanta Review, TriQuarterly, and various anthologies.
swallowed. I’m done trying to breathe
How much more you must have expected from them.