Adam Clay: Two Poems

Voice From A Fragmented Song | Dear Reader

Voice From A Fragmented Song

I caught a bird in this piano. The fearful song,
Flapping wings, strings struck by a feathered body
Rhymed like the curve of a bone bent almost to break:
Sweet, dead Silencer, most suddenly clear.
A crack in the door let a stream of light in
And the pear I held sucked up that sound, that light,
And turned to rot: a small sea, the bursting forth
Of commerce between bird and tree.
The light that let my face look on this room
Is a dance no one remembers. If I could touch
That bird right now, if I could eat that pear again,
Oceans would be too quiet to remain eternal.
Fetters of ice and blood—I can't sing what I heard:
The history of this room is out of tune.

Dear Reader

Four days with no birds (empty nests everywhere), and I expect the void
To stretch farther than sound into the next year. The idea of a bird
Will not come near, either, but the sky (or the idea of the sky),
Falls, nightly, around my voice and my tongue, my song, is mine no more.

Poet's Biography:

Adam Clay lives in Northwest Arkansas and has poems forthcoming or published in Black Warrior Review, Mississippi Review, Tarpaulin Sky, Octopus, Milk, storySouth, The Styles, 88, and elsewhere. He co-edits Typo Magazine.