A Dead Boy Undoes His Mountain

The finite enormity of it.

Everything reawoken by the absence of anything.

For once I can leave the grass unclaimed, sink into green and unmake
each cloud from my image.

The mountain painfully small above pins a star on my chest.

Even now, you have never been here.

And between spasms of light a tree loses its oakness. In undefined shadow I lose
only the skin of us.

Waiting in my ear the thunder behind silence,

in the hollow of my ear becoming silent.

John Sibley Williams is the author of eight collections, most recently Controlled Hallucinations (FutureCycle Press, 2013). He is the winner of the HEART Poetry Award and has been nominated for the Pushcart, Rumi, and The Pinch Poetry Prizes. John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and Board Member of the Friends of William Stafford. A few previous publishing credits include: American Literary Review, Third Coast, Nimrod International Journal, Rio Grande Review, Inkwell, Cider Press Review, Bryant Literary Review, Cream City Review, RHINO, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.