Shell Casings
/Beth Oast Williams
February cracks her frozen
bones around my throat.
Turning blue was my own fault.
I wore the book jacket out
in the cold, forgot the true story
it told. That mirror won’t bring
the sun any closer, it shines
a made-up face to the snow.
Brown blades of grass bend drunk
from icicled dew, their dreams
of green just guitars in a field.
I wonder what the backsides
of clouds look like, a wig
of mother’s gray hair or merely
a bag of unspent bolts. All this
while David’s ankles struggle
to keep that once-perfect man erect.
Take a peek underneath, the tick
of an alarm clock beats like a bomb.
Author’s Note: This poem began on an airplane with the sun beating through the window. Looking down, I couldn’t see the ground because we were above the clouds. I realized people below were experiencing a cloudy day and began to think about how so many things are not what they seem.
Beth Oast Williams’s poetry has appeared in Leon Literary Review, SWWIM Everyday, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle's Poets Respond, among others. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.
