Two Poems|Claire Williams

Put On A Record Darling

until now i thought you’d be a god come

to rescue me out of my life. now i turn a stone into

anything i want, and i no longer have to practice

pausing mid-chew to let the bite of flesh

dissolve secretly in my mouth.

i never asked to be a happy woman.

i asked for retribution to be swift. what i got was this

whale song. something in between the two?

my wisest friend suggested and i fondly love her for it, even

as i doubt, and set the needle back again, drink the wine red

sea with my tongue, my sore and swollen eyes.

As If Someone I Trusted Were To Come Up the Small Path and Knock Unexpectedly On My Door

you lay down a lot of brick i love you you sore

and salty and burnt i love you you dark and soft

and wondering i love you you picnic you adventure you

gate you ghost i love you. you steam—thick mist—

tangled nightdeep driver – from here and self i love

you you bare armed crest chested wide lipped

mistake maker i love you you falling poise just

you i love even terrified yellow light or violent

what becomes becomes becomingly: i love you tears,

ink, dirt, regret and all: what else can i do?

a hundred other things. but what i wanted to do was

make it here, to be with you who i love just before i

was never here you belonged to yourself you had

nowhere to get stuck you gave up the shape they

caged you in and i love you shifter, looking first with

this eye then the other the solstice came and

then the eclipse didn’t it, see everything that needs

to happen with your hands is about to be happening now.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Bio:

Claire Williams works as an archivist and writes poetry and prose in the in-between. She moved from California to Vancouver, BC in 2015, where she now lives and works as an uninvited person on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. She is a pushcart prize nominated author whose work has been previously published in online and print journals such as The Knicknackery, Bombay Gin, sparkle + blink, Poetic Diversity, and Word Riot.

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