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half-life of a different country
by John Sibley Williams

February 10, 2022 Contributed By: John Sibley Williams

Empty Sand Field
Photo from Pixabay

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

—  J. Robert Oppenheimer

 

it must be there
in the soil : still

the radio insists
nothing remains

but desolate & un-
lovely wind-swept

country : no burning
hills or unbreathable

air : no aftermath : no
echo : the model homes 

built for just this purpose
rooted to the same earth

like failed desert stars :
the lungs of every child 

born within 50 miles un-
touched by the darkness

i cannot help but hand down
one more generation : son

& daughter & this roomful
of unbalmed wounds : every-

thing collapsing into gravity
: the color of their skin & curve

of their eyes are borderlands now
: minidoka ghosted in their blood :

pandemic a kind of self-portrait :
those turbines in the distance hurt

our view of unabated absence : older
energies : detonations : the father they invent

every day to give themselves something
to look up to must still be here : inside me 

a half-believed-in faith that for every
action an equal & opposite : that the un-

stable core of us decays a bit less violently
than it used to : soil & star & the ghosts

of my great grandparents cursing this god-
awfully beautiful plurality : their world

a key broken off in the lock of a door
i’m praying my children will never open


JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS is the author of seven poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award), The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). A twenty-six-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. Previous publishing credits include Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and TriQuarterly.

Filed Under: Featured Content, Featured Poetry, Poetry Posted On: February 10, 2022

Further Reading

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WHAT MAYBE CAN MEAN by Weston Cutter

She opens the door still buttoning the last buttons of her shirt with one hand, smiles hi and we’ve been this way two times already, now three— we know the chances but haven’t more than kissed, we’re early enough to be both sure and incorrect. Two minutes, she says, fingers up and walking away. She leaves the bathroom […]

Impossible Belonging by Maya Pindyck
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Lyrical, imagistic, playful, profound, Maya Pindyck’s new collection of poems, Impossible Belonging, celebrates abundance, welcoming Dickinson’s nobody and Whitman’s multitudes.

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