OFF THE PAGE
Finding a way
and life. Web
of soil, words
just nature’s
bird silent
body; petrel
flying underwater.
From sink to river
we go quietly.
~
SOMEWHERE AND NOWHERE
Planning but settled,
and close – transit
rooms, rain windows,
numberless rooms, making
too many sentences. I
started them with I;
I‑time presses the stalk;
come the walls.
~
BREATHING BEYOND
We stripped
off brine
in snow slush
a light riding
out ahead, smokers
walking alone
leopard seal
coarse beach
in silence
to go back
where they
came from.
~
DROPPING AWAY
Car stop; beaten sky
and sweat edge.
Something set me
gone, a fist to the ear,
blood and tunnel steam.
Cheek to hood, seeing
a sparrow bathe in curb gravel.
You can’t do nothing,
do nothing.
~
SKY ACCIDENT
Earlier marched
died, some slit
and absurd. Night
runs. Cottonwoods
counting breaths.
Ruin graffiti: This
is my name – I existed.
Want is reason;
speech comes.
~
Adam Day is the author of Left-Handed Wolf (LSU Press, 2020), and of Model of a City in Civil War (Sarabande Books), and the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a PEN Award. He is also the editor of the forthcoming anthology, Divine Orphans of the Poetic Project, from 1913 Press, and his work has appeared in the APR, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Volt, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He is the publisher of Action, Spectacle.