First Words

Phillip B. Williams

A storm and so a gift. 

      Its swift approach 

            lifts gravel from the road. 

 A fence is flattened in 

      the course of the storm's 

            worse attempt at language --

 thunder's umbrage. A tree 

      is torn apart, 

            blown upward through a bedroom 

 window. A boy winnows 

      through the pile 

            of shards for the sharpest parts

 from the blown-apart 

      glass. He has 

            a bag that holds found edges

 jagged as a stag's 

      horns or smooth as 

            a single pane smashed into 

 smaller panes that he sticks 

      his hand inside 

            to make blood web across 

 his acheless skin flexing 

      like fish gills 

            O-lipped for a scream 

 they cannot make. 

      He wants to feel 

            what his friends have felt, 

 the slant of fear on their faces 

      he could never 

            recreate, his body born 

 without pain. When his skin's 

      pouting welts 

            don't rake a whimper 

 from his mouth, he runs 

      outside, arms up 

            for the storm, aluminum 

 baseball bat held out 

      to the sky 

            until lightning, with an electric 

 tongue, makes his viscera 

      luminescent; 

            the boy's first word for pain 

 is the light's 

      new word for home.