Two Poems by Gabrielle Williams

Yours Truly,

The points of the elbow are bruised against this body.

Whisper, bite, boomer. A house filled with nothing but washing machines.
Insatiable kitchenware
midway between a flashback of his yellow bedroom and restless palm.
“You’ve been waiting for someone to put you together you’ve been waiting for someone to push you away.”
The neurotic swing of the bullet, escapism and its yellow birch wood heart.
Leave this fire behind
rusted bone. No, stupid game. No, sleepwalk dance.
The curtains are waving goodbye.
The man in this dream is lying in his backyard
dirty. . . hungry. . .hollow.
“I am made entirely of flaws, stitched together by good intentions,” he says.
The man waits for some sunshine on his lawn, beyond the tragedy, beyond
the crunch.
The innovation of a bird feeder seeming self-indulgent
Provoke. Confront. Elevate.
He deems this day a beacon of his latchkey luck
Although he hopes his minimalism won’t crack in the mud.
Every night he sees his disambiguated vices
She notices only the virtues.
Together they are a pair of eyes ambivalently searching for holes in the ground
wondering if they have planted enough yellow roses this year.




My body is an orphanage

 

This is a California dream of Jack and the beach

of waking up in toothpick colored sand(s)
running to the shore and back.

There are salty billionaires in

southern California, in Newport Beach, in San Francisco
a memoir of the city resisting totality.

This is an entrance to the simplicity of his sauced body

We have stopped eating.

***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a

metaphor for being in love
with musicians—
the effervescent groupie: an affair that I have dog-eared for later.

I am uncertain of our verbal history

I am an anti-fact
I am hunting bears with confectioner’s sugar
My body is a sovereign nation.
He is grand wizard he is svelte
He is an investment

This is a concrete documentary.

This is a pyramid song
Like a glasshouse

I am an ugly Christmas sweater

I am moving forward with my life I am becoming ambidextrous
This was a series of empty events.
I am a sugar bowl a fire escape a telescope
I am immured
I am sand paper
I am wet wood and pillars.

This is us revisiting our sandcastles.

We are folding over the love parts.

Gabrielle Williams is a Chicago native currently completing her undergrad in poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She is the 2011 Haiku Contest Winner of the Columbia College Library and has recently been published in Columbia Poetry Review.