Poetry and Art by JC Williams & Cassia Williams-Rogers
After Landfall
My sister’s house still stands. Its siding is peeled
back, its roof stripped of shingles. A breeze
wafts through missing windowpanes. Inside,
once polished oak floors are warped, rough
underfoot, and cradle wet remnants of driving
rain. Black spores dot mounds of plaster now
in clumps at our feet. A framed photograph
of our father already smells of decay.
When the water receded, searchers found
an old man with his dog sitting dazed
before his house now in pieces behind him
but not the woman swept away by rushing water.
And the photo of our dad? It will dry. Dull,
without familiar shape or face, and will take
its place by the curb with piles of discarded
treasures that grow taller with each day.
On Waking One Day in October
This day breaks without a name
to mark it from any other. It sneaks
light along my window’s dark edge,
slinks onto my stage for dreams.
I linger -- savor the impossible --
feats untamed by gravity,
encounters unmoored from time.
I stretch -- like a timid guest --
fingertips to toes, delicately test
my comfort in this body
brittle now from use, misuse,
disuse. I push
up, sit on the edge
of my bed
not yet ready for today.
Surface Waves
As a father is dying
in Key Biscayne,
peaks crest
toward shore. Tangles
of seaweed, broken shells
-- now polished smooth -- litter
the path. Each wave pairs
with its distant metronome, pushes
shimmering white before muddled
green. One wave folds in on itself,
collapses before landfall.
Another races to dry sand,
a darker trace
all that remains.
*poems by JC Williams accompanying with one-line drawings by Cassia Williams-Rogers.
About the Poet and Artist:
JC Williams began writing poetry after careers in philosophy and law. In 2022, she participated in AWP’s Writer to Writer Program working with poet Jehanne Dubrow. JC’s poems have appeared in Months to Years and Songs of Eretz. Her experiences growing up in the South find their way into many poems. In addition to poetry, her loves are her partner, their daughter, and tai chi. She currently lives in Maryland.
Cassia Williams-Rogers is a first year MD/PhD student at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. The one-line drawings accompanying these poems are part of an on-going collaboration with JC Williams for a chapbook in which all poems are illustrated and all of the illustrations are connected with one line. The illustrations were drawn by hand using an Apple pencil (2nd Gen), an iPad Air (5th Gen) and GoodNotes5. Cassia is passionate about baking, genetics, and her two cats, Yuri and Adi (named after RNA bases U and A).
