2 poems by Adele Elise Williams

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With Darlings 

Alone I am at my very best but I seem always to be followed by darlings

darlings with sharp teeth or darlings with fuzzy bodies or darlings with big 

bellies or darlings with wide shoulders like bookends I do not mind 

the darlings I do not mind the kisses from lips like long purples or little lips 

like shell shards I just miss myself all alone on a Craigslist mattress 

or a borrowed rug I miss wearing tops no bottoms cheap gold robes 

drinking sparkles and Stoli eating a sandwich for every meal I am a hell

of a catch alone but with darlings I am less in love with myself with 

darlings I am momma or host or maid or teacher or quiet quiet quiet

I am totally or I understand or try deep breaths with darlings the borrowed 

rug is bought the bed is made the beans are soaked and with darlings 

with loving darlings I am all in My sister says you too alone are magnolias 

you alone are a delta flower you don’t have to be thirsty ground cover 

kill your darlings darling kill all your darlings but then who would rip 

the sheetrock from the walls who would wreck the rug

Horny in Wyoming

i’m at the age of almost the middle of not really

but forty feels closer than ever and as i was going

as i was saying i’m at the age of listless desire of 

domestic domain of following delicious men 

on instagram of devouring literary smut of married

but still sexed still baaaaaaad and who makes these

rules anyway why we gotta stuff it all down why

we gotta lust like berries for the sun like anyone

for anyone and i’m here where promise is a color 

hued pervy where i’m in all black like the heated 

heifers like every element of a high plains night 

here where nothing gets gone nothing gets got

and i find myself inside myself and fear the

reveal fear the hide too here where i am where i am 

and the night is bitter-black and the men so rough 

i die for the dye i die for the dream of fingers

sandpapering my throat of something hairy and hived 

pushing my blithing body down the sage brush 

scratching my thighs the fist-sized stones calling me 

home where my man sits sinewy in city sun loving

me like a car battery like all hot and metal 

home where the asphalt rips our clothes where we stare 

into each other’s eyes wholly citified and bright where

the sun blinds the blinds and we hold and hold and 

and hold and hold and hold each other and on.

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Adele Elise Williams is the author of WAGER selected by Patricia Smith for the 2024 Miller Williams Poetry Series. With Dana Levin, she co-edited the most recent volume of the Unsung Masters Series on poet Bert Meyers.

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4 March 2024