Two Poems by William Thompson
“I gather stillness in a cold/that hushes all but little sounds—/a woodpecker’s echoless tappings,/leaf-crackle of a jostling squirrel.”—William Thompson
Speculative Friction
By Claire Bateman
GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—November 2018— William Thompson’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including the “Atlanta Review,” the “Saint Katherine Review,” and “Able Muse.” He teaches at Troy University, where he edits the “Alabama Literary Review.”
His Clocks
By William Thompson
At feeding time they tried to roll him over.
His body tilted, like branches and a stump.
Pink liquid looped along the feeding tube.
His dead mouth breathed, a hollow in a burl.
That was “no place for a young boy.” You drove me
back to his house, where there was “something left
of him,” and walked me in as noon arrived,
or just before, or just after—who could tell
with so many double notes cascading
from the doors the cuckoos shuttled through,
the springs inside their chambers creaking
like trees among those detonating chimes?
Feral Cat
By William Thompson
I gather stillness in a cold
that hushes all but little sounds—
a woodpecker’s echoless tappings,
leaf-crackle of a jostling squirrel.
A scrapmetal snail beside the path
of flagstones lined with roses rusts
in vegetable fragrances:
leafrot and humus and damp mulch.
White-socked, sundown-gold-&-black, she
watches me from there. This time
she doesn’t run. We’re small within
November’s crisp, deciduous fire.
To order copies of Claire Bateman’s books Scape or Coronolgy from Amazon, click on the book covers below.
Claire Bateman
Claire Bateman’s books include Scape (New Issues Poetry & Prose); Locals (Serving House Books), The Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan University Press), Friction (Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize), At The Funeral Of The Ether (Ninety-Six Press, Furman University), Clumsy (New Issues Poetry & Prose), Leap (New Issues), and Coronology (Etruscan Press). She has been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Surdna Foundation, as well as two Pushcart Prizes and the New Millennium Writings 40th Anniversary Poetry Prize. She has taught at Clemson University, the Greenville Fine Arts Center, and various workshops and conferences such as Bread Loaf and Mount Holyoke. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina. (Please see Bateman’s amazon.com Author’s Page for links to all her publications, and go here for further information about the poet and her work.) (Author Head Shot Augment: René Laanen.)