Evan Williams: Heat Lightning
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Mother Dearest
I am
sorry. I've been thinking
about the last time we baked and
I licked the spoon clean, how I slept
that night, and all
was safe.
I dreamt I was waiting for a boy named Hansel.
I woke with my face in the grass, unsure
of where I'd been carried.
Where did you carry me, Mother Dearest?
Did you get home safely?
I've made friends with the owl who sleeps above me.
He asks who, who brought you and I drift off.
I dream I am waiting for a boy named Hansel.
Mother Dearest, please
send me a little baking soda to put in the soil;
it will make the ground rise and this is how
I will build a home. I will make it
sweet, with some sugar too. Maybe
I will sleep soundly.
As I dream, a boy named Hansel will arrive.
Heat Lightning
He can stay
if you sleep outside: the rule
for friends during the summer
when it was nice out. We’d stay up,
never sleeping,
convincing each other
which girls were hot,
who we might have a chance with.
When we did finally sleep
on the trampoline,
a bounce and then
closer, under stars and above
the earth we'd surely be buried in
if anyone found out.
Evan Williams is an undergraduate at The University of Chicago. He thinks a lot about masculinity, and about lighter topics, like how best to name the animals he and his brother come across. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Heavy Feather Review, and Fourteen Poems, among others, and he can be found on Twitter @evansquilliams.
