Of Complications

When we pause for a picture there are multiple

            takes. Her hand cups

                                    into my waist,

                                                twitching

along my hip. It feels

                                    most like clutching

            for what can't be

                        reached, knucklebones jutting

out like broken

                             pylons. Her hair is cordgrass

            quivering in rip

                             -tides. I rest my palm

on her back and wish

                                    hers could

                                                       hush

            to touch the beauty, the arch

of vertebrae bent

               over an age she drinks

                              like wine. I instead

brush circles there, hoping to create

calm

            for her—for when the world

                                                           stood on her toes

to fall in step with the

                  dancing.

The photograph will be false. She will be                                             

                                               

                                                    Parkinson's in my arms,

                             shriveling. The truth will be

hidden in digital pigments:

                                             I am the one being embraced.

This hip has formed bone,

            has hardened against years and lost

its soft

             wobbles across the yard.

                                    She is an old mother.

I am supposed to be,

                                   now,

            the neighbor's baby I used to be.

She holds me still,

                                still—

still.

Three Conversations I've Actually Had

1. CONVERSATION WITH DISEASE

The idea is to dissect west into peaks I can't see but know are there, into the vast altitudes until they gulp down the last bit of gas I have. To uncoil into the truth.

What does the truth look like?

These walls are all psychology books. Bricked lists of questions with right answers. These walls have always been here. He draws out of me like a siphon the coffin of moss he wants, the half-hearted lacerations, scabs and big secrets: the blue-green of dreams.

What does the truth look like?

Like returning to the womb. Like red columbine rotting into the river from which it drinks. I am loosening from   form.

2. CONVERSATION WITH HOPE

When

            gravity snaps

I will cut

loose like a thread,

                               tilted

out

      of the cords of the earth.

When

           gravity snaps

I will loosen

out of my

                self and be

wreaths of

                  mist into mist.

When

           gravity snaps

I will find

what I've

                lost

in the

           weight, somewhere,

                                             somewhere

in there where I know it to exist.

3. CONVERSATION WITH TRUTH

I am gone west, I am the empty

tank, ponderosa seal peeling

back like a broken ribcage. I climb

down into the stone

throat of the waterfall. I am the hinge

between horizon and sky. The air

is particulate, sound

pouring agape into the crash

basin. I have rotted

to this place, come to what I've imagined:

rock edge, vastness.

There will be an end, finally, to the gravity

in my heels. An end on the underside

of the river. I lean into the mist—

as into casket padding, as into a lover—

but feel it keep me on the cliff, swelling

like inhaling, untangling

me. I uncoil

into truth: I am not where life

breaks. This is not where I fold

into the earth. There is a bottom to everything.

This is where scars, becoming smooth, sink.

Family Dream

           

We are three shades hip

                                      -deep in azaleas, rhododendrons

lipped around pine forest like

                                                 kisses at the shift

of mountains. We shoulder the sun, rise with honey

-bees. We form the rim of heaven.

/

Father is three sizes smaller, wilted in what I wish

could go back and be just a dream. Tubes into holes, holes

where eyes have sunken back, unhinged

jaw frozen open like a gate. Blood

backs up in stale puddles behind his ribs.

/

Three decades before

we smoked and thought nothing

                                                     of it, pulled

triggers for quail, pushed our pulses

                                                            into our throats.

Here we carry fistfuls of bloodroot

                                                          blossoms—glue to hold

together the opening

                                   folds of dream.

/

The stiff, cold steel warms against the breastbone,

grain in the stock mirroring the creases

and calluses—mountains, valleys in his palm.

Brother's thumb is on the trigger, the scythe blade.

/

I can feel the pillow case clinging to my cheeks,

                                                                               tears

the adhesive to keep it

together. I can feel laughter

                                              in the valley, dipping

our fingers into outer

                                    space.

/

Smoke is the old language I identify.

My lungs have been described as raisins

unraveling into the half-breaths I stuff them with.

I have been fated to fill like the gaps in a dream:

only with things we think could have been.

/

Dream is healing: my brother’s chest

                                                             cavity still

closed, father’s arteries open

                                                wide, my lungs at

                                                                               capacity.

We smoke, pull

                          triggers for quail, laugh our

                                                                         hearts out

of our chests. I bend

                                  to a dandelion, uproot

the stemmed cloud and it scatters

                                                       white. We fade

into the halo of honeybees,

stroke sky with black fingertips.

P. J. Williams teaches high school English in Apex, North Carolina. He hopes to pursue an MFA in the Fall of 2012. He hopes the world doesn't end in the midst of his studies.