Embedded Files
from FUTURE RAIN
Electric reciprocity is the order of the day no it is selfish
Undoing that is the order of the day I need to beast this
Even though you wouldn't notice here's the hiss of reciprocity
In the envelope the ear is
Not the logos but what it’s folded into what makes it go
Forever fighting off the day
Even though you know you’re missing the salvific bits
It's really the whole nectared grid you're talking about
The absence of though all
Absences are not
Equally absent
In the heart
For the order of the day to be a good thing it can’t be too abstract
Even reciprocity is too abstract, everything is
Year’s end night falls in fundamental fragments
Systems by starlight pulse and beckon and harden their limits
Amid the tough trees driveways and houses of the continent
They wait for earth to catch its breath
Year’s end rhythm horses hymn rubbed amber
Fire wheel cadence farce in ancient November
Everything comes out in the wash, bird poems
And bird poets reassuring each other they are loved
Year’s end perihelion ticking sluggishly by
In grub paradise fragment by indecent fragment advance
Their plow while Egypt rides at anchor
Happiness speaking to itself of loathing
And everything in Lagos smells like incense
Icarus falling everywhere
Painting that aches at the very edge of yellow but aches all over
Veil that tints a great secret yellow and green your head and body
Painting that aches through yellow into white seeps through
Veil on veil thrill and witness veil on veil between them gathering breath
Painting throwing face in its own shadow painting’s light
Veiling face’s light the dark of the world and solitude mix falling across
Painting casting azure downward intimate and demotic as blue jeans
Veil glass plastic and shadow sunglasses lurid oil
Painting of the astonished sky painting smear of sun throwing wet light all over the city
Veiled to gods and drones in the envelope of everyone's simultaneous want
Painting of blazing deserts blazing paintings of light going for broke
Veil luminous as sugar
Painting your mind cataracted in on itself the shadow so athletic
Veil thin as the edge of the shadow of the life of humankind
Free as clocks angels
Filling the room with their form, how far, how close, were you watching
Suicidal librarians talking leaning fast against a wall of cold rain and snow
Discuss landforms cracking into rivers, examine the threat matrix. She’s the kind of person
About whom it matters
Whether the good outweighs the bad. Leaning fast
Against a tempest wall
Beside where the Xerox snorts and pants ideas meet with geographers
Heavy under a red moon. Examine there the master. Seek you wisdom still?
Here’s the pouch. Rip it open
Here’s the collective, rip it open
And trust what spills out when it says
Anywhere in the world you see this mark
We meet in a psalm.
Say the Lady was a storm, eyes milling
In 5K fury rain shaking something loose from her hair, perhaps the Lady
Her pearls may be fake but their glint sways algorithms
Real hard, confusing real rain with fake, perhaps the Lady wants to know
Are you eligible for politics? Is your breath sweet? Do the beads you wear
Count real pain? All the dark the light falls through to reach you
Still comes with it into you when it enters your being, does it not?
As you must grant it does the rest of us as well?—Who is the Lady?
Something coming loose from her hair, speech ribboning daemonic
Sybilline but crystal clear from breathtaking dime-sized speakers
(“Crystal”-clear = all of it refracted into vision)
Who is she and what do her drones see hovering high over the current
Situation? Something coming loose from her hair as she turns,
Streaming cold light and search results whipping past you gasping at it
Stephen Williams is the author of four books, most recently Is and Isn’t (selva oscura, 2026). A chapbook, Scholar’s Rocks, is forthcoming from OLAH. Recent poems have appeared in Revue Transat’, Lana Turner, and elsewhere. He lives in Chicago and teaches at the School of the Art Institute.
Copyright © 2026 by Stephen Williams, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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