For My Father, Who Will Someday Die
Likely because his lungs
have turned umber, lost the color
flesh first learns when filled with air:
pink under soft ribs like
clouds washed in flame. Strung
up, deflating like a birthday
balloon, he will lose the will to stand
atop his spine & become a spiral
of ribbon on the floor—mine
to re-spool, to breathe &
straighten out to speech: Praise
the sun that from a vacuum
colors the sky.
P.J. Williams
P. J. Williams was born and raised in North Carolina. His poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Salt Hill, The Pinch, The Adroit Journal, and others. He is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop (Minor Arcana Press) and serves as a poetry editor for Slash Pine Press. He was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize from the University of Alabama in 2015.