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"

"she gave me a clover keychain and kissed my head"

"In a city like this one, I can be invisible, mute."

"I left him after twenty years"

"This one stirs up cosmos"

"a three cheese blend"

"An uncle's gift to an abandoned child"

"No complaint from the rake"

"It's been so long since I was young"

"A reminder to us all"

"Hells bells should they glimpse a hint of truth"

"could deny our love no more than a bird its song"

"naked and golden brown"

"Bouncing on black beans"

"wrong"

"Hissing, honking, haughty bird"

"he's half deaf and hiding it again"

"We were once as brothers"

an intact family, happy if not strong

"The dragons make me drink whiskey"

"I never thought the wildness in you would ever let me hold you"

"My dreams are like ghosts"

Of course there was no bull

"Where you've gone I cannot follow"

"I straighten my brain's antenna"

"the kind of blue that bruises the sky"

"If anyone rolls their eyes or acts out, they get sent to Pluto"

"but as graves might be arranged"

"nicking the crisp edge of your life against mine"

"We are near each other yet so far apart"

"misplace memory's folded origami"

"fissure-lightened dry"

"She's all verb leading"

"I haven't found what I was looking for"

'is it solid like a bug"

"Our fossilized love, embedded in strata"

"it doesn't seem to belong here"

"prairie's not a woman after all"

"This fall we'll offer nothing for the harvest"

"I wanted to hide forever from the world"

"behold the candle of the soul"

"Call them Truth and Beauty"

"burn with me/an hour/a minute/a second more"

"Belief is to live"

"as though the air knows it's time to pack itself together"

"become well-lit"

"fallen branches"

"serenading gondoliers"

"secrets revealed"

"oysters snatched up"

"So goes the stuff of paper hearts"

A poem for the people.

"I'm grateful we're given a day's notice"

"Sky that was bitter indigo is now the frank black of boot polish"

"words emerge and brush me around"

"you got Shakespeare in the divorce"

"watch the stars burst way before you can count them"

"slippery with sighs"

"What am I without the next cloth of you"

"I touch the bristle of my beard"

"You're taking an artistic risk"

"When the panicked laughter gives to newfound shrieking"

"They love to peer in windows"

"This is our last dance"

"the summer burnt blueberry skin of the Bahamian" 

"inserted with a twist & hook into the matrix"

"so, just relax, and when asked, tell the truth"

"an umbrella warning of a wrung-out sky"

"Tobacco on the tongue stings bitter with the drip of a sinking hour"

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

"myopia of myths"

"I put no faith in stilettos or glass ceilings"

"the world today's a dangerous place"

"hides its true age like a fan dance"

"you felt hibiscus tall"

"Heavy-handed strokes / Punctuate this piece."

"you will still spend your breath to complete your poem"

"That was only the concept art"

"The brain is a stronghold "

“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."

"Stop in on Pluto, since no one ever calls anymore"

“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"