Tyrone Williams
Winter 2023 | Poetry
Two Poems
-sam
between whims of doubt…
Sea of Beginnings, 2018
Water drowning in water
taking on water-
logged auto
out d’eau
tops-
ided over-
thrown
being nothing
other than
watery
under
wearied
swirling
pulling up
water down
trick-
sky
out of hat-
shaped water-
holeware shift
water
housing
watershopped
water
shipped
off to water
wreckoned water
mowing down
lawns of water-
brushed hair
inklings streaming
out to water
thought thinking mid-
ocean-pool
water boxed-
up shoes
boxed in closets
filling up with water-
borne remedies for art
and unto water
v. water
court of water
serving water-
level- lined
compulsory water
falling
______y cristos
hand and face
toweled water-
mark Euro-
cardwater
Almeria
pop-up
sinking into water
in the pink
brain leak
house shoe
lace credit
negligee
F
half
call
letters
dead
man
down-
wind
ow ater
ing
ear
worm
heart
water
main
dreck
dressed
up for water
adrift
carried
away by carry
water clear
Florida
Taste
green water
Chi
wate r iver
below
water way
above
Hocking
caves back-
water balloons
flat Savannah
waterless baths
half
way
up Mojacar
J burning
Mediterranean
water cup
June London
world water
sprinkling hand-
bags of water-
beds water on water
K
a po -table
cd
pl y V
D awashed
water-
colors blue
invasive
pastels hues frame
dining room of water
umbers of the living
driven back
into the walls
of water tidal
forces held
at bay key
ice
tray implants
idle berg
devil-thaw
water the plan
tat ion pre-
treat skin
therapeutic water
bloated
anorexic
wafer-thin
water
Around the way
Bored by the motor
under the city
keeps running if you keep oil in it
in and out of earshot
with Thunderbirds
night-flight dreams of dawn launches
landing in desert ranch houses
cigarettes jazz and highballs
before the call to the second
most important meal of the day.
Fisticuffs
just run
he said his next day
iced down
Leslie Williams
dark-skinned scorn for dark-skinned
Papa ahead in books but behind
Valerie McCreary
ran away (to white, some say).
Leroy calling out our bluebook forks
hazy tables on the horizon
seats supposed and secondhand stools
Mr. Turner’s malaprop guitar
misspelling AAB
Elaine Hamilton take your break Mr.
Moody sales and size sixes
sliding into sevens
running small.
As for be that as I may
neither Cranbrook nor Ford
gave my losses be they 1717 Hazelwood
Crosman Elementary Parker Hospital
back to me
so I sat back down
said Deal
shook
on it and lost again
2274 Monterey
those losses
a little more
though not as much
my sisters cousins carrying on
me miscarrying.
Around the way
the brothers were still jamming in the basement.
Next door a flooded basement
bailed out my folks…
adrift on the raft of a painting
I saw once
upon a long a
go to the store
and so a boy went
and a boy came back
with things
and change
under a tent of stars
a guard of elms
he looked up
peered upper
squinted
more uppest.
Tyrone Williams is the David Gray Chair of Poetry & Letters at SUNY Buffalo. He is the author of several chapbooks and seven books of poetry: c.c. (Krupskaya 2002), On Spec (Omnidawn 2008), The Hero Project of the Century (The Backwaters Press 2009), Adventures of Pi (Dos Madres Press 2011), Howell (Atelos Books 2011), As Iz (Omnidawn 2018), washpark (with Pat Clifford)(Delete Press, 2021)and stilettos in a rifle range (Wayne State University Press, 2022). A limited-edition art project, Trump l’oeil, was published by Hostile Books in 2017. He and Jeanne Heuving edited an anthology of critical essays, Inciting Poetics (University of New Mexico Press, 2019). His website is at https://www.flummoxedpoet.com/