Phillip B. Williams

PARADISE 

“I’m yours/ You’re mine/ Like Paradise” – Sade, “Paradise”  

Assassinate the stars by granting time is ersatz
brutality, a lover awaiting a petal bevy
come down from its “loves me, loves me not.” Cicatrix:
dead river carving its phantom dune. Moonbow:
echo of light haloed in a curve of light, an improv
fulfilled between source and refraction. You
ghost through lovers’ lives then steal the evidence, abet
haunter and hunter to grow from a paramour’s 
inquiry. Where did you go, abandoner,
jester who staggers, who staggers a stuttering heart? Q:
kill the stars by counting their living-dead days or stop
loneliness one wish at a time? A: You, too,
may stay yet scar, may false start toward one wan
night, no nova just no one. Arm   
or armory, both hold potential harm. In a newborn’s caul,
pulsating quasar. In your adult disguise, dwarf star, struck
quarry for blood or blood diamond. Your path no Hajj,
records instead prints gone remiss in your tread, and I,
shallow follower, found a farther figure in your fallout, ash
traced into human shape God blew no breath into. Fog  
unfurls where last you stood. My knees scoff
veering off all fours, crawling from the cave
where you are both shadow and caster, forged
xanthic day just torchlight and whim. Sun is a relic
yawning from the past. Heaven is a vacant tomb,
zenith of a heartbreak stretched alpha to omega.

PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS is a Chicago native. He is the author of the poetry collections Thief in the Interior (Alice James, 2016), Mutiny (Penguin, 2021), and Lift Every Voice (Penguin, 2026);  and the novel Ours (Penguin, 2024).  He is a professor of creative writing at Rice University and a founding faculty member of the Randolph College low-residency MFA program.