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As if she waded through brown rivers [  ] clawed
mountains down to valleys expecting something [  ]

potable, a rivulet of mother tears or lake [  ] of children’s,
as if she abandoned wide-open cage [  ] for cage, swollen

belly for another kind of [  ] hunger, picked up the only
job that didn’t ask [  ] questions & argued with her god

every night over the meaning of [  ] night, the town overpriced
to keep the dollars [  ] on this side of a border

that doesn’t look like much [  ] of a border, more intersect
where field meets matching field, where three children [  ]

are already learning a language they pray [  ] to use someday
to speak with a mother whose [  ] face vagues from

memory [  ] the harder [  ] they try to wear it [  ]
over their own [  ] [  ] [  ] [  ] [  ] [  ]

 
John Sibley Williams

John Sibley Williams is the editor of two Northwest poetry anthologies and the author of nine collections, including Disinheritance and Controlled Hallucinations. A seven-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Philip Booth Award, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize, Confrontation Poetry Prize, and Vallum Award for Poetry. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a literary agent. Previous publishing credits include: The Yale Review, Midwest Quarterly, Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Saranac Review, Atlanta Review, TriQuarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon. 

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Study in Black²

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The Whole I'm Told We Return To