Adam Day

A Bodily Way of Knowing

 

                  After Mark Bibbins, Michael Dickman & Joe Wenderoth

 

We’re the ancient
brides. It’s so beautiful.

Even so I’m always glad
to get back home. To see

a man in handcuffs,
how you feel about that,

depends on whether
the servitude is voluntary.

People seem to respond
to what owns them. When

I first died I stole a lock
of your hair while you slept.

Now I dip it in ink, cross
my legs and squirm. And

on that final night I tore
eye-holes in a black pillowcase,

slipped it over my head,
made love to myself

in the mirror. We are
that animal everyone

is interested in but knows
almost nothing about. We

move out across the water
in our clumsy bodies

the color of steam
and blow out the breakers,

one by one, then hang
as moonless fish in river rest

amid the vulnerability of hope.

 

Adam Day is the author of Left-Handed Wolf (LSU Press, 2020) and Model of a City in Civil War (Sarabande Books). He is also the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a PEN Award. His work has appeared in the APR, Boston Review, The Progressive, Fence, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He is the publisher of Action, Spectacle.