Poet: John Sibley Williams, Portland, OR
Smalldoggies Poetry Feature #16: John Sibley Williams, Portland, OR
These selected poems have been excerpted from a new manuscript of numbered poems entitled, Controlled Hallucinations.
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Controlled Hallucinations
I.
Certainty
is a kind of map
to get
lost
by.
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IV.
I’ve chosen to believe as much
in the clay crumbling between my fingers
as in the fully-formed vase
defined solely by its flowers
or the fingers around my heart
defined solely by my heart
or the child screaming out from my past
or the clay that remains in the crevices.
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X.
I fell into the Grand Canyon and broke
the rose in my eye
that I’d carefully planned to see through
when encountering such obvious
illumination.
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XX.
These hastily made masks,
so ornate, colorful,
stoic and utterly
broken,
no two alike—
the bus overflowing
the city overflowing
the nation overflowing
with slipped-on portraits
to hide the one face
we refuse to share.
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XXIII.
The shutter clicks.
Our love is now timeless.
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John Sibley Williams is a poet and book publicist residing in Portland, OR. He has a previous MA in Writing and presently studies Book Publishing at Portland State University, where he serves as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and publicist for Three Muses Press. His poetry was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize and won the 2011 Heart Poetry Award. His chapbooks include A Pure River (The Last Automat Press, 2010), Door, Door (Red Ochre Press, forthcoming), and The Art of Raining (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, forthcoming).
Take a look at his official website: John Sibley Williams