Live Encounters Poetry & Writing June 2026
Pool Kingdom, 1978, poems by M L Williams.
Pool Kingdom, 1978
Izzy pulls up in his low-rider Impala
all chrome shine and polished clean,
hydraulics to bounce, sweet rims to cruise
with some girl he hopes, and the Clovis kid
and his blonde buddy give him racist shit
before Roger sends us out to trim hard-pan
with picks and shovels and jackhammers
for a liner built-in, 108 degrees in that hole.
Raz and Dean light smokes and pick hard ground
to shards for inches the backhoe missed
and I ask how they can put fire in their mouth
in this heat. “It cools me down,”
says Dean who plays guitar and sings
when he’s not in a hole or hanging liners
and then goes on about John Prine again,
schooling this college boy home for summer.
Mike, the boss’ kid, chimes in, who’ll blast
Van Halen all the way home and Raz
will roll a joint and pass it after this long day,
twelve hours. Quiet and beat, evening coming
into red sunset, we’ll sense the blown cool
that open windows give our sweaty arms
all the way back from Firebaugh or Mendota,
small towns where a four-foot piece
of braced sheet metal and a vinyl liner
are heaven to people who work
the Thompson seedless vines or grow
fat cotton, and our Kingdom the white van,
palace of butts and fast-food wrappers,
rusting tools and empty talk of songs
or cars or girls, the day broken only
by blessings of water gushing from a hose.
Sometimes there is no story
Rows of Thompson seedless vines,
Paper trays of raisins, 99 degrees and no
shade, blue sky bleached by haze.
Check for black widows
that hide under the trays. If
you find one, let the paper down
softly and stomp it when
it tries to crawl away. If not,
roll the paper around the dried
grapes, not yet black, and place
them on the trailer bed—roll, load,
walk—all day, short break for lunch,
no shade and dust in the nose
and mouth. No story. They pay cash.
Without Leave
We go to the National Gallery
to see Cezanne to Giacometti
bored fiancé elaborated cat
Klee’s geometries Picasso
blue and cubed faces
Matisse’s magazine covers
Braque’s pipe but on the way
out the deserter Sidney Nolan’s
larrikin bandit Ned Kelly
gang leader his angry
Jerilderie letter condemned
the mistreatment of poor
folks in the bush
two years running from his murders
his rifle his horse his armored head
tilted his last days canvased here
his square and heavy
head flat no eyes
but the bush seen through
he is hollow he will
be hanged he is
hollow but not
empty
© M L Williams
M. L. Williams is the author of Game(What Books Press), the chapbook Other Medicines,and coeditor of How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets. His poetry and prose is published in many journals and anthologies, including Salt, Western Humanities Review, Hubbub, Plume, Miramar, The Journal of Florida Studies, and The Cortland Review. He teaches creative writing and contemporary literature at Valdosta State University.