P A T R I C K  W I L L I A M S  |  Monsoon 2014

Behavior Flows

There was an error in the extended play.
The actors had to change their names.
Called in sick, slept in late, sat on stoops
collecting landing planes. That meteorite 
chunk they found? I say don't go near it 
before it’s boxed & bulletproofed. Let’s catalog 
our sign-offs, let’s say them each again. 
So often I think they just belong to me. 
I just looked at my hands for the first time. 
I just told myself don’t think of anything. 
Glory be to the fallout, glory be to the bomb.
Help me find a tufted sofa. Sing me the tune 
of kiln-baked wood. Give me an earful 
of your star text. I need it for this lawsuit.




Our Loop

You know how she can 
roll with dives so long 
as your strongest pitch 
pushes any unsavory 
metadata into the bokeh?

The real trick is to locate 
whole evenings within districts
where even the cleanest
dérailleurs are impermissible. 

It’s there we dine again, pairwise
in soft pink noise, on the tender 
sacrament of our favorite fiction.

*

Patrick Williams is a poet and academic librarian living in Central New York. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including The Metric, Word Riot, 3:AM Magazine, M58, Sliver of Stone, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. He is the editor of the poetry journal Really System.