Contents
THE BACKWATERS PRIZE IN POETRY
SKIN MEMORY
John Sibley Williams
The Backwaters Press
An imprint of the University of Nebraska Press
2019 by John Sibley Williams. Acknowledgments for
the use of copyrighted material appear on pages ixxi,
which constitute an extension of the copyright page.
All rights reserved. The Backwaters Press is an imprint
of the University of Nebraska Press.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019017151
Set in Arno Pro by A. Shahan.
Contents
Acknowledgments
The author extends his heartfelt gratitude to the following journals for
previously publishing poems, some in different versions, in Skin Memory .
American Literary Review : Fog
Asheville Poetry Review : Killing Lesson
Atlanta Review : On Being Told: You Must Learn to Burn Like This
Barrow Street : Tonights Synonyms for Sky
Bluestem : Says a Father to the Night from His Emptied Nest
Columbia Poetry Review : Everything Must Belong Somewhere
Confrontation : The Length of the Field
Contrary : Inventing Fire in Northern Michigan in December
Cream City Review : On Being Told: White Is a Color without Hue
december : After-Bruise
Emrys Journal : Symptoms of Shelter
Exit 7 : Adagio and [this is only a test]
The Florida Review : Hekla (Revised), Nocturne, and The Animal
Fourteen Hills : Then We Will Make Our Own Demons
Hiram Poetry Review : Rules of Common Landscape
Jabberwock Review : Dewpoint
The Journal : Snake. Tree. Rope. Wall.
Juked : One Horse Town
Live Encounters Poetry & Writing : Swing
Los Angeles Review : Sanctum
The Madison Review : Forge
The Massachusetts Review : Closure
Meridian : Sons of No One
Mid-American Review : We Can Make a Home of It Still
The Minnesota Review : Star Count
New Orleans Review : Off Season and Always Greener
New South : Poison Oak
North Dakota Quarterly : St. Helens [1980]
Poached Hare : Skin Memory (reprint)
Poet Lore : Compared to Even the Smallest Star, the Moon is a Child
Poetry City, USA : Variations on a Theme
Poetry Northwest : A Brief History of a Perfect Storm
Poetry South : New Farmers Almanac
Redivider : Death is a Work in Progress
Salt Hill Journal : Skin Memory
Saranac Review : Than the Dead, Prelude to Again, and Anything
Can Be Made a Halo
Sequestrum : Outage, Fog, Death Is a Work in Progress, Skin
Memory, and St. Helens [1980]
Third Wednesday: As a Child, Drawing Purgatory
Trailer Park Quarterly : Fog (reprint)
TriQuarterly : Father as Papercut
Two Thirds North : Salt Is for Curing
Vallum Magazine : It Was a Golden Age of Monsters
Vinyl : Spectral
West Branch : For C. D. Wright
Whiskey Island : As Above, So Below
Wisconsin Review : There Is Still
The Worcester Review : Absence Makes the Heart
The Yale Review : On Being Told: You Must Learn to Pray and On
Being Told: You Must Learn to Love the Violence
Yemassee : Before, and the Birds After
ZYZZYVA : Natural History
Segments from Dear Nowhere have been published in Permafrost ,
Kentucky Review, Pilgrimage, and Packingtown Review.
Fog appears in Listening to Poetry: An Introduction for Readers and
Writers, edited by Jeremy Trabue (Salem OR : Chemeketa Press, 2019).
And a very special thanks to the editors and judges of the following
contests:
Fog won the 2015 American Literary Review Award for Poetry and
was nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize.
Skin Memory won the 2015 Philip Booth Poetry Prize from
Salt Hill Journal.
The Length of the Field won the 2016 Confrontation Poetry Prize.
We Can Make a Home of It Still won Mid-American Review s
Fineline Competition.
Dewpoint won the 2016 Nancy D. Hargrove Editors Prize from
Jabberwock Review.
Death Is a Work in Progress won the inaugural Redivider Blurred
Genre Contest.
As a Child, Drawing Purgatory won the 2016 Third Wednesday
Poetry Contest.
It Was a Golden Age of Monsters won second place in the 2015
Vallum Award for Poetry.
Before, and the Birds After was a finalist for the 2016 Yemassee
Poetry Prize.
SKIN MEMORY
Skin Memory
I have begun to understand that the Inupiaq language itself
is a form of resilience, that poems are a form of resilience.
Joan Naviyuk Kane
Because you are what song breaks open your throat and because the
same century burns a different mark into me. For now I can just listen.
To how choreographed our forgetting. To the dark little narratives of
this is mine / yours , in that order. Can you sing this country its name?
Because skin has a memory all its own and because memory is a
language thats survived its skin. For now I just walk the waist-high
replanted pines of unassimilation, carrying my words like anchors
through an open field of oars.
Snake. Tree. Rope. Wall.
When it has been night this long
we learn to see with our hands.
I know groping for names
takes the form of prayer
for some people while others
engineer new dreams from the blindness.
Not everything begins all at once
with elephant. Not everything ends
once the details decide on a context.
A thousand crows beat against night.
As were left with only a few fallen feathers
truth is what I make of it.
For example, the sky in my hand today feels
silk-spined and smooth and spirited by the wind.
The wind feels like wherever its come from.
Today my father is a slack line
running dead across the lake.
Lets agree to call what were touching his hand.
Lets say its still warm.
Lets agree our hands are enough to judge.
Lets say the hollows in his skull are
eyes and that all eyes can shine
if you sweep the flies from them.
Lets say we are certain of this one thing
then lets never touch it again.
Dewpoint
And it starts
with a moth caught in a lidless jar
or barn fire horses beating themselves
against the frame of a wide open door,
nettles and unmended cuffs, fraying,
