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Image by Vladimir Chuchadeev, courtesy of Unsplash

Discipline

First thought: the speckled darkness 
was a storm’s arrival shocking birds
from their perches. 

Second thought: not birds, suddenly up,
but a hand across, five digits their own
five violences:
          betrayal, velocity, bloodtooth, quiver, “will he return?”


Then thinking itself became uncanny.


Cheek forced to blush, head still
thrown awry as though from pleasure,
such that pleasure was refashioned: storm, feathers, vast blur.

Phillip B. Williams reads “Discipline”

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Carl Phillips

Carl Phillips’s new book, Then the War, will be out in early 2022. Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.