• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

Constant Williams: Chambered

September 9, 2022 by PBQ Leave a Comment

Take them, he wept, his last request 

before he died. And we did. 

And they laid there in our home 

where we compartmentalized them 

into non-existence, ignored them 

like you might an older drunk at the bar who

sits at your table and wants to be loved— or to

score some cocaine—and then leaves after an

uncomfortable silence 

in which your entire group looks away

from a heavy truth they don’t want 

to lift just yet. 

 

I say this because she’s been gone 

for two weeks now, and I’ve wholly 

avoided her name. Which is to say 

that my father grew up in a house of silence.

Which is to say that as my grandfather lay dying,

he turned not towards his wife, or his God, but

towards the gun rack. 

Filed Under: Issue 103, Poetry, Poetry 103 Tagged With: Constant Williams

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ @ the Pen & Pencil!

PBQ Slam Session!

Slam Session with PBQ!

PBQ @ Poetry Tent!

PBQ @ AWP!

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org