M. Drew Williams
Poetry
M. Drew Williams is from Western New York. His poems have appeared in publications such as Harpur Palate, Hobart, The New Territory, and Poetry South. He holds an MFA from Creighton University.
Pike
All I had were answers to questions nobody cared to ask.
Overnight, the rippling pond was flattened by the cold:
its surface was fitted with ice thin enough to peer through.
Crafted long ago from secondhand lumber, the snub dock
was unoccupied thanks to the biting weather, and so I sat
at its furthest end, hung my feet just above the tissue-thin ice.
How fitting it was just then: to rest beside something as fragile
as I felt I was. Pike still roved freely beneath the water.
Juking in and out of sparse sunlight, bodies like whetted shivs,
they were unaffected by the cold darkness. It suited them.
The answers in me couldn’t account for their indifference.
They'd survive at all costs, it seemed. We were nothing alike.
“ This is one of only a handful of poems I was able to write last year, all of which centered around the theme of fragility. I tried to conceive of something that would serve as the proper antithetical representation of this theme. I ultimately settled on pike, hardened and uncaring creatures concerned only with their own survival. ”