Youthful Offender

Orphaned, night goes around undoing everything
we thought we’d built to outlast us.

This slight starlight graffitis its name
up & down the schoolhouse wall.

No Trespass means nothing to the bullets
the wind carries from our hands, outward.

Because ash is always plural, dawn doesn’t bother
stacking the living together before burning.

Author of the article

John Sibley Williams is the author of five collections, most recently As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize, forthcoming 2020). A twenty-three-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a poetry editor and literary agent.