ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Three Poems
by Adam Clay


[A QUICK NIGHT IN THE HESITANT CORNER OF MY MIND]

A quick night in the hesitant corner of my mind
might not be what I remember.

Memory continues to be a troublesome knot
in the broken English of my thoughts, and in the posture

of my mind, I remember that which makes a good story.

This is not a good story.

This is a knife stowed with grace in my boot. To depart
for the country is a consequence only the dead can see.

And I see it. I see it in the swift face of confusion. In the
splinter of my thumb. In the butcher-apron colored night.

[CLEAR AND BALMY. I ROSE AT HALF-PAST THREE]

Clear and balmy. I rose at half-past three
this morning to find insight
resting in my anatomy, despite
the truth that neither one can breathe on its own.

Perhaps a drinking man
would say it was wine which brought
my person to this point,

but there is no drink in my body.

My feet are rocks upon this fallow ground.

Silent sad indeed. What of
the scavenging animals that return nightly?
What of the rage we briefly feel as children?

What of this unsealed envelope in which we live?

[I DO NOT DENY REPETITION AS THE SINGULAR GOAL OF EMPTINESS]

I do not deny repetition as the singular goal of emptiness,
but repeating emptiness is something
worth dismantling.

I love the tangible aspect of my world,
but the concrete bores me.

Watching an ice cube melt from the inside bores me.

What doesn't bore me can be found in The Museum of Domestication.

I realize my words are only a footnote to the sea.
I realize the sea is only a song to myself.