WE GO QUIETLY

Moss grows
around her mouth,

grass from her tongue.
The naming action

that normally
makes sense fails;

So, let’s be quiet,
tell medium truths,

so many kinds
of truths.

---

BIRD-SILENT BODY

Purple and silver
thistle growing

between broken glass
and unheated stones.

Drone glow
bleaches green

from trees, air
empty but full sharp

weaponless play.

---

THE OTHER SILENCE

The sisters carry
darkness up

the mountain.
Silence may be

all that is
at the other end.

---

THE PRESENT FIRE

Suburban coyotes
caught, legs zip-tied,

dropped into
a dry well. The world

in which she finds
herself and might

define herself
does not exist;

so she does not exist
for that world. The pale

light of insufficient
answer.

---

WATERFALLING GENERATION

Future children
of present fire

of not enough;
leaf only a web

of veins, house’s
naked beams.

---

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 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.