And other poems
by Adam Day
Extraneous Copper
Would you like to be friends, one
adult asks another before Aarhus
manhole covers nippling out
of the night rain streets. Aren’t ordinary
troubles enough? Don’t worry too much what
the neighbor thinks. He’s a fucking great
teddy bear. Then again, you don’t want
your name in her majesty’s guestbook
come the revolution. Will they
remember and talk about the soft skin
over my calves? Growing small trying
to become. Fearless cum drinking then
sleeping. The way space is depicted
as a reflection of how we behave in
space. Tea service with sea swells
behind. I will love you at 8 p.m. next Tuesday.
All-American Girl
He stands out like a bleached anus
in a lineup of dirty asses; pudgy,
basement-dwelling geisha, stuffed
on cookie dough and beer, pausing
between mouthfuls of hotdog to
bellow at the TV until his jelly
face turns red. Spring emerald
eyes of a Siamese, shoulders
like a trout, he won’t drink water because
fish shit in it. He’s my practical
fantasy, mechanical and restless.
Taught me it’s not going into battle
that’s difficult to imagine, but
coming back; like some department
that isn’t memory, but close
to it, like 15 grand in an account
in case our girl wanted a nice
hotel when manic, or ripping
sheets there into strips twisted to
cord, removing the wall’s AC
unit and jumping out, neck
tied, into a long, clonic, thick slice
of night. We’ve each hit an age
where we feel the need of youth,
which is to say the nubile are finally
alien, a visual companionship
to our aloneness, which we possess
separately and share with one another
among the seaweed on Newport Beach,
the coonhounds roaming over it, haunting
ghost crabs. And on cold leather seats,
racing through Atlantic darkness,
it struck me, one of us, at least,
just might die with a smile on our face.
He’s my practical fantasy,
mechanical and restless; pudgy,
basement-dwelling geisha, stuffed
on cookie dough and beer, pausing
between mouthfuls of hotdog to
bellow at the TV until his jelly
face turns red. Spring emerald eyes
of a Siamese, shoulders like a trout,
he stands out like a bleached anus in
a lineup of dirty asses; won’t drink
water because fish shit in it. Taught
me it’s not going into battle
Evacuating Liberty Or We’ll Make A Man Of You, And A Woman
Sticking your head
out the train window
like drinking a cup
of cold tea,
like a commodity
designed to stimulate
desire and impulse
into reality, a
conduit for teaching
cleanliness on the
heels of chaos, lively
as a long yawn,
a good portrait
of furniture,
long periods
of tedium punctuated
by moments
of terror, shortage
of bathrooms,
the mother duck
hit by the tractor-trailer —
she’s hell
if you owe her
money — like
a bedbug-ridden
family, who use
the grand piano
for a toilet
and force you
to clean it out.
Being Alive May Come In Use
A hard face in soft sleep, it’s a pity
he isn’t a bit better looking. But
might be in time. Will her eyes rest
upon his vigorous hips? She will
perhaps eulogize him: I didn’t know he
had died; sex with him was basically
the same, but the dishes began piling up.
His breath was scented as if his mouth
had been used as a latrine by a small creature
of the night, and hers as its mausoleum.
Hard to believe they were once teenagers
under a piano lying, nostrils-flared,
beside an ashtray. They liked standing
just at the edge of a subway platform
as an express train blew through. Heavy
words lightly thrown. But not to stand
on ship’s deck and peer down into the heavy
water at a face in the fog, that was just
the fog. Dock lights in dry night;
pennants and tinsel stiffened in sheer
winds. Clutching hands, they’ve been
very brave, walking around on both legs.
What Big Teeth You Have
After Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth
My first job was the newspaper stand. Eight years old,
milk teeth already fallen and replaced by others wide
as shovels, each pointing different direction. My boss’s husband, Álex,
my first true friend, though twenty years beyond me. His wife
kept him house-locked, every 11 a.m., she sent me
with keys to see Álex — what was doing and could I
grab anything from the shops. Álex would be lying
bed in underwear, Ms. Unamuno all over him.
A pigeon-chested old spinster with a public radio
show, always opened: “This is Unamuno:
modestly depressed, engagingly eclectic, sentimentally political.”
Idiot. When I came into room, Ms. Unamuno spring up,
tuck in her blouse, and fumble-zip skirt. I would be looking
floor and, sometimes at Álex peripheral, still lying bed, staring
ceiling, passing finger tips over his bared midriff.
When fully dressed, spectacled Ms. Unamuno would palm-slap
my forehead. Not taught to knock, asshat? Álex came always
to my defense: He’s called Áshley, and he’s my friend. Then
a disconcertingly long canine-teeth-with-flattened-points
laugh. After Ms. Unamuno finally slipped out — all anxious — through
back door, Álex would sheet-wrap herself, superhero cape
and invite me to jump on bed. Up down. When tired, we’d
lie down and play pocket billiards. She was often
gentle. Finished, she’d give a bread slice and mineral water pouch
with a straw, then send me to newspaper stand. Away,
I’d drink the water, pocket the straw for later. Eventually
accumulated ten thousand plus straws, word of honor. What
was Álex doing? Ms. Darío ask when I returned stand.
I’d cover him, inventing details, some innocuous activity:
Just trying to thread needle, kill a termite, christen a gown.
Adam Day is the author of the collection of poetry, 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 Emerging Writers Award. His work has appeared in the Boston Review, Kenyon Review, APR, AGNI, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He also directs the Baltic Writing Residency in Sweden, Scotland, and Blackacre Nature Preserve.