And Now Upon My Head the Crown

And Now Upon My Head the Crown

By Phillip B. Williams

1.

             In the first place—I wanted him and said so

when I had only meant to say. His eyes

opened beyond open as if such force would unlock me

to the other side where daylight gave reason

for him to redress.

                                          When he put on his shirt,

after I asked him to keep it off, to keep putting off

the night’s usual end, his face changed beneath

the shirt: surprise to grin, to how even the body

of another’s desire can be a cloak behind which

to change one’s power, to find it.

2.

                                                                 In the first place

he slept, he opened the tight heat of me that had been

the only haven he thought to give a name:

Is-it-mine? Why-you-running? Don’t-run-from-it—as though

through questions doubt would find its way away from me,

as though telling me what to do told me who I was.

About This Poem

“This poem is part of a few ‘failed sonnets’ I’d written and revised out of their intended form. In this revision, I wanted the phrase ‘in the first place’ to move through two possibilities: the first instance and the first location. That there may be other readings is great. As for the title, I guess I was thinking less about success and more about regretting when one gets exactly what one has asked for.”

—Phillip B. Williams

About The Poet

Phillip B. Williams is the author of Mutiny (Penguin, 2021), a 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry finalist, and Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books, 2016), winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award. He has received a Whiting Award and Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He currently lives in Philadelphia.