John Sibley Williams

And Other Acts of Mercy

Snuff: as in the charred half of a wick;

as in the extinguishing candle of her body, so
bent & burning it no longer resembles a mother;

as in the tobacco pinched between father’s lips
and gums, dawn’s amber spittle without a vessel

to contain it, waiting here all night for something
to finalize; as in the kind of film that ends with

soaked sheets & a broken harmony, one less reason
to love each other, one less reason to stay; as in

how she lingers in our nostrils like lilac & piss,
how this will end up defining her, this last morning,

this closing reel, this noose of heaven, this suffocating;
as in how long it will take to remember her fully lit.

Fully lit: as in a wide-open, shadowless shore.

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John Sibley Williams is the author of eight poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award), The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press) and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). A twenty-six-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 founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. Previous publishing credits include Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner and TriQuarterly.