Adam Day

from “MIDNIGHT’S TALKING LION
AND THE WEDDING FIRE”

a day . . . lull in the bombardment children emerge to gather
around “a broken structure” descend from “the top of a slope 
of debris” like a spies,” transfixed by a cleric “[w]edged under 
a fallen beam,” the children: “Speak to us,” they goad, “What 
is your sermon today?” 

~

Before coming to the children “growing up in state housing
their land was becoming” a night down in abandoned sewer,
raining outside phosphorous flares above the city, a few
candles in here, barrel bombs. The child sleeps shoulder
drooling. Packed close round are other citizens little talk listen
wide eyes to above the streets at first cried on being wakened
middle of night. But grown used to stand now near 
the entrance to shelter, watching flares and bombs, chattering,
nudging, pointing. Will be a strange generation. 

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 Fence, Boston Review, APR, Volt, Lana Turner, Iowa Review, and elsewhere.