Adele Elise Williams is the author of WAGER, selected by Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series, and Sacrosanct, forthcoming from the Wisconsin Poetry Series. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at UNC-Chapel Hill as well as an Assistant Editor at Conjunctions and Texas Review Press.
Rain’s been so heavy, the herons
fall from Live Oak limbs
like pennies down a thin well. A girl
was strangled and thrown into
the bayou, again and again. I saw
a man so hungry, he ate his own
beard for breakfast. The heat
here makes everyone crazy, boils
our hearts into hate.
Clifton was born with twelve fingers; mark of a beast! Sexton believed herself to be her own naughty God. It’s just me and the Bus Stop Madonna in this poem; my stupidity is performed, her Jesus is figurative. What are we really ashamed of here, anyway? The thing or the performance of the thing?
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