READING WATER
Derek JG Williams
Reading Water is author Derek JG Williams' first full-length collection of poems, and is the winner of the Lightscater Press Prize, awarded in 2024 and chosen by judge Eduardo Corral. The book considers the elements that make us who we are, and love that’s born then bound by the bonds of family and friends. Its poems undertake a restless search for a self under constant evolution, and are threaded together by images of water’s ephemerality—what happens above and below its surface.
​
Order READING WATER here.
ISBN: 978-1-962206-21-1
Format: Paperback
ODE TO THE TONGUE
​
Drawbridge sewn to jawbone.
Axe handle. Diviner of speech.
​
Median muscle. Axis muscle.
Taste-maker.
Fibrous changeling.
Backyard conjurer.
The silver tongue coaxes.
The fork tongue seduces.
The tongue twister teases.
And the tongue tied twitter.
Pierced treasure.
Silver pearl supine in its center.
Secret keeper. Crass eel.
Tamer of sweet breath.
Collector of sweat.
Desire lives on the tongue’s tip.
A goliath.
​
​
from Reading Water. First published in Best New Poets Anthology 2013.