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The Language of Shadows by John Sibley Williams

April 1, 2012 Contributed By: John Sibley Williams

Act I

Evening cannot fully digest its own seeds
or come to terms with its darker progeny
so choking on each bite it devours
what came before,
what it knows as simple prey.
And day grows old in its father’s mouth
until even upon a stepladder light
can no longer reach the highest cupboards
where we keep our forgiven sins.


Act II

The simple savagery of dishrags evening wraps around night
so night must read us through blindfolds, human Braille.

It seems unjust to align the stars night gives
with all we’ve put off for another day
as it endlessly seeks in its silhouettes of trees and ships
a convergence of our languages,
a shared definition of tomorrow.

The kitchen sink is overwhelmed with dreams
conceived without an architect.


Act III

Day shrugs off the myriad layers of things
and the layers of words we’ve placed around those.
It expects the conversation will continue through night
with the purpose of fire and the purpose of stone.
But evening, so uncertain, throws us shadows against cave walls.
Bless their little dreams, it repeats,
for they too begin and end, and so night ends
in the shadows we’ve thrown, unfulfilled, against it.

Return to table of contents for Issue 5 Spring 2012

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: April 1, 2012

Further Reading

LA SIRENA by Katie Atkinson

—after Julia Fernandez Sanchez’s painting her breasts are empty shells. (she has no children to feed—she eats her young before their lungs are formed, swallowing them in yellow slurping gulps.) her skin is brown, la sirena sienna. her hands are firm and sand-callused, and a tree of knowledge about the bodies of men sprouts from her head. […]

CARBON excerpts from Rana Dasgupta’s photography series

  Return to table of contents for PRACTICES, POWER & THE PUBLIC SPHERE Return to table of contents for Issue 2 Winter 2010

COMMUNIST LATENTO installation and text-based work from Raqs Media Collective

  Return to table of contents for PRACTICES, POWER & THE PUBLIC SPHERE Return to table of contents for Issue 2 Winter 2010

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