Oxygen, fire, by John Sibley Williams

There are open wounds & wounds that open

Oxygen, fire,

by John Sibley Williams

---

one feeding the other. You can tell by how long it takes a bullet
           to pass through a child’s chest the circumference

of our forgetting. There are open wounds & wounds that open
           to vast green horse-filled fields. I know they say

we need the darkness to bask fully in the light, that if sin
           then god, & as a tree still standing who am I

to argue controlled burning with the ashen? If we cut off
           the air, the flame, a forest grows wild. War always

keeps its promises. One body feeds another, which has no
           idea it’s as edible, deliciously necessary, already being

forgotten.

First published in Sequestrum, Issue 17, 2018.