GAS Featured Poet: William Waters

William Waters is an associate professor, in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. Along with Sonja Foss, he is coauthor of Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation. His research and teaching interests are in writing theory and modern grammar.

 

Ezra

For Burt Hatlen

After all that thunder,

You remained

Still:

A room after

Mozart ceased;

A room still

Without distraction;

A space

Filled

With shadows.

I think of you

I think of you

though this hasn’t happened--

thirty-five,

alcoholic, and alone.

I think of you

closed

in a room

in the

city

--tugging hard

a beer. -- turning

back again

to your father,

too drunk to get out

of the flames.  Identified

by teeth.  Your mother, 

a picture taken

before you learned

to walk. -- your

past.

I think of you, 

almost empty,

pushing hard

the typewriter

keys...

your last effort

an explanation.