Current Issue: Spring/Summer 2011

Conversations with Imaginary Women 
Johnathon Williams

Because she sleeps so soundly, and I sleep not
at all, I creep from bed to the moonless yard
and address the women who wait in the dark. They guard
the fence and the field beyond, the weeded lot
where coyotes prowl. I confess my secrets, sick
with the keeping, years of want too long unsaid.
They listen, point to the house: Tell her instead.
But it’s impossible, our silence so thick
no words can machete through, a jungle grown
darksome and proud, and we fear what stalks beneath
the canopy, what wildness sharpens its teeth.
Explorers once, we’re lost now, shipwrecked, alone.
Still, these women, they only point and coo:
Go back to bed. Sleep, silly boy. I do.

 

Johnathon Williams co-edits Linebreak with Ash Bowen. His work has appeared in Best New Poets 2009, Crab Orchard Review and Unsplendid, among other publications. He works as a web developer from his home in Fayetteville, AR.