Violence

Adele Elise Williams

I have already said Gun three timestoday like this Gun Gun Gun I wrotean essay on it just this week — onthe saying of Gun and things of painthe essay talks about a gun dancebetween my boyfriend and a gangkid it talks about my no teeth I had nofront teeth until I was eighteen I didn’tkiss a boy until then either — becauseof the no teeth — and it was a slipperyslope down to fucking the essay alsotalks about my uncle who overdosedwhile I was in rehab but it doesn’t sayenough because I don’t know enoughI just know that my mom had tucked meinto rehab like a fever dream and onlya few days later she tucked her brotherinto something darker and forevershe called and told me he was deadshe said dead like Dead Dead Deadbut it was quieter than that the essaytoo talks about my dog who is falling topieces — teeth, tags, and toes —all not right and so thin so they breakor tear like an orange she is onlya dog but she knows my soul in the essayI forgot to talk about my nana and howwhenever we flew her out of New Orleansshe had no airport etiquette she putzedaround and joked Bomb Bomb Bomband wouldn’t stay seated I forgot to tellabout when I shot a musket at a pumpkinor when I took a hard fist hit and gottwo black eyes together all at onceor when Laura shot herself in the facein the school bathroom during lunchand I was at my locker and I heard thecrack and I went to the bathroom andI opened the door and everything wasr e    d red red red red red red red red red red red red red redred                                                                                                            redred red red red red red red red red red red red red red redred         red    rred.        red  ered         red dred         redred red red

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Photo of Adele Elise Williams

Adele Elise Williams is a PhD student in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston and a former executive pastry chef. She is co-editor (with Dana Levin) of Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications and received multiple honors, including the 2023 Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing.

Cover of Wager by Adele Elise Williams

Fayetteville, Arkansas

University of Arkansas

“All sass and smarts, Adele Elise Williams’ Wager does the duende—that dance with death Lorca said all great poems risk. In life and in art, Williams meets the prospect and memory of annihilation with ferocious honesty, linguistic play, and wit. Deeply moving, deeply fun to read, Wager makes telling the hard truths a tonic.”
—Dana Levin

“In Wager, Adele Elise Williams hands us a set of sharp and gleaming poems that uncover our deepest selves. Williams lets us see through to our own humanness—its intricacies, its riches, its sinews, its terrors, its glory. There is an immense kindness in these poems, as Williams navigates the ways in which knowing the self can always be scary. ‘How the most familiar thing becomes / the opposite of gentle when dead’. These poems make the known sublime with the gorgeous streamers of the unknown.”
—Dorothea Lasky

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