Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2011

The Leaving  
Adam Day

There is the rain on the copper
roofs, there is the click-shuff

of red heels on concrete, the voice
of a ruddy-faced neighbor

above, calling after her husband.
In their apartment the pillows

still sleep-dented and sour
with breath. The headless straws

of iris stalks hang above
the credenza, beside the battered

front door. There are the bridge’s
rust-water icicles, its bands

of moss seaming a forgotten
cobblestone sidewalk. There is

the river in thistle-gray cowlicks,
and the husband above it deciding.

 

Adam Day is the recipient of a 2010 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha. He is also the recipient of a 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award. His work has appeared in the Boston Review, BOMB, APR, Guernica, The Kenyon Review, Forklift: Ohio, AGNI, The Iowa Review, and Best New Poets 2008. He coordinates the Baltic Writing Residency in Latvia, is writer-in-residence at Earlham College, and edits the literary journal, Catch Up.