Poetry Published by San Antonio Review

"It’s hard to be a city at night, sleeping along this big river. So much wakes you from slumber ... "

"for the 13th time i’ve looked at the time / glowing back from the phone that never sleeps"

A poem from musician-poet Harold Whit Williams' latest collection.

"Heavy-handed strokes / Punctuate this piece."

“Pencils down now, please,” / Armed men politely order. / "There shall be no press.”

"It matters not to me, as I assume / Some gods cannot exist except in dreams, / In trifling songs."

“The lighthouse is a century old; / I only ask for half of that time.”

"Maybe thanks / For separating thoughts from what one thinks."

“hair trimmed in reeds instead of ribbons”

"Saltwater jerks & spits"

"Byzantium is but the shadow of a whisper"

"I have forecasted my future / happiness"

“I know you’re reading the inverse print of the carbon paper”

“the old and young laborers who never knew a train ride, / never knew you could go elsewhere, be someone else.”

“yet navigating by the heart / is a tricky business”

“She taught a lesson no one wants to learn.”

"settlers without blueprints"

“On an arc of bending bladed metal, bowed”

A Meditation on a Translation Work-in-Progress

"pyrrhic freedoms fade softly / into heat of noon sweat"

"A material so imbued with history / cannot be a blank slate."

"the dead starve in their hollow / halls"

"maintenance / compassion / nurture."

"Can I survive the very light I created"

"Later / tonight, a baby will be put into my body by an act of love"

"You know from the floorboards that you are / in a forgotten city."

“I sometimes think / That any given 2 people/ As 2 Euclidean points / Define a line”

"I like games and fun and play and I like talking about how easy poetry is, how everyone is a poet, how the alphabet is a playground and we are the players."

“newton said that energy is neither / created nor destroyed”

“the waiting — the looking — and yearning”

"fever-dream / of the Un-united States"

"Craftsmen lay out their hand-made dolls wearing ancient emperors’ robes and hats."

"side to side like strangers"

“The first blueberry pings the pail’s / emptiness”

"a barn collapsed / in a spiral of timbers and twisted roof"

“Take. Take. Take.”

"i'm not granite / but a / breakable innocent"

"I dreamt I was the ashes of / Christ"

"Our East Anglian-Indian summer bounced in place"

“We're having a baby soon. / Despite being two men.”

"Now I know to call / this a panic attack."

“and we drank the silk milk of her voice / watched her body thin on prime-time Saturday night”

“I puked my prayers / sweated in tangled sheets”

"our escape velocity wasn’t enough / to leave Ohio behind forever."

"I never should have happened"

“I cannot hold the light for her”

“the rain dolls sway with beads of glint / in their matte eyes”

"Our mothers were jeweled / in nose pins and brass hoops"

“tear with shrapnel hands / eyelashes from their skin graves”

"when the last train came through i missed it / i was in the bathroom trying to zip up my sanity"

"The wind is looking for his foggy keys / to sneak through the door."

“My bread’s in need of / blessing; salt the theft.”

"Though we dream of dying at our curtain, / most are carried off mid-speech / or awaiting cue"

"it's 7 / a.m. on this fine / sunday morning"

"I live atop a smoldering volcano, / always rumbling and threatening to erupt."

"She dreams of me in matte"

"I counted twelve hundred drops of rain / to cull the drought in the desert"

“And there we stood / looking out in silence / at the great river / too wide to swim across”

"These fopdoodles don’t know diddly-squat."

"You will not forget what you were made for, / And you will not ever give up the fight."

"I dream of your dance with warm nectar / and the frosted hummingbirds buzzing by."

"We keep our distance"

"And you journey here in couples or groups, / intent on wading out into my waters"

"One crooked alley morphs silhouettes into drain pipes with / Night, the magician, molding frames"

"Boy, you can talk."

"i’m not deceivedby the brilliance of fall"

"The trees heard and watched / until I had to be dragged away."

"Last semester, a student with Asperger’s announced / to our class that yes, Frank O’Hara was right"

I stand by the window / watching this half-hearted quarantine.

-- overheard in an audience

"And each time I’m reminded of my age / and that this is how it will be."

"does more than look"

“Dreaming of something and not fully understanding that which / compels us to keep moving on.

“What if we felt everything / while walking & / it was all worth it?”

"In my son’s wide eyes I can see / the steeple of the church we left / after one too many dirty looks

“You were packed off, steered / In the direction of your mother’s desires.”

“Her mother pleads, Don’t do it, / don’t do it, but, twenty-one, she boards / the ship anyway”

“One blood tipped consonant cuts like a scythe”

“A soldier found her, pulled her deeper into the grass.”

"There must be a 12-step group you could join –I’ll even drive you there – or a therapist who'll help you fill your dog-size void."

“This / was my parents’ way, / grabbing from a fight the night before / and carrying it into the next day”

“I bet they never / Dreamed they’d end up here.”

“Sad old men were once promising young fools.”

"I could show you / the drunken bicycle"

“Lisieux’s little flower knew her guilt”

“little crystals fly around me / weightless ash planets swirl”

“I am sinful in my innocence”

"Unfathomable pain leads to unfathomable choices"

“Closer than what I remember as the edge / of the earth with a sail cast out on string”

"Daily they carved out a life"

“and I had nothing / but a couple of classes / and a head full of books”

"Hi, how are you?"

“He felt his way with fingertips searching for the nightstand light, / with the soft click and amber glow, he began to dress.”

“she glances at me / looks away / before I’ve got a chance / to wave hello”

“First and foremost, it is a shield”

“Why can’t abattoir mean / boudoir?”

but what you make others see

“I am sorry I never grew my arms / long enough to wrap around”

“Heat mutes light and summer women / don’t know any better, or they do”