John Sibley Williams

Chimera // Pablo Picasso

Though nothing about her many faces makes sense, all
incongruous angles, overlapping symmetries, fire-

breathing assemblage of impossible parts—taken
together, made whole. As if everything is self-

portrait. That casing flattened by a train I wear
as a necklace looks too much like my grandfather

after Europe husked & dried him, & stuffed his shirt
with yellowed newspapers, how we’ve hung him

over our dead fields to terrify the crows. How they return
to feast from our dry earth, regardless. & the monstering

bodies my children invent to make loss seem holy.
These safety scissors: some fabled anchor. This cutting shapes

from cloth: the sibling they never knew they had. Once.
As if once is enough. As the plastic stars we’ve glued

to their sky birth fresh constellations, & we name them
after the most brutal animals we can think of. Tails

snaking up into lion into goat into nothing that looks
anything like love. Because love is meant to be enough.

Because her face doesn’t hurt the way it should when we
wear it over our own. Because all angles are the same.

Because we must eat before we’re eaten. In turn, how
I cannot wait for them to eat me. Husk & dry me.

Make me myth. Then disbelieve.

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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.