Adam Clay
Nothing much to speak of: they grow
Away from each other, not like this action
Should be seen as less of an existence.
Order in everything,
Even as the evening separates
From the atoms disagreeing
Always with the void; outer
Life isn’t what the plants keep
Secret from all but us:
Their inevitable demise
Means little. In this arc, we grow
Further apart in silence,
And sad to have brought about
Such foulness; no one is free:
An explosion filled with silence,
The air that pulls itself into a single
Frown. A sudden summer evening.
Taken from the obvious dark, but still
Each dusk manages honesty so well
Its abstractions seem only to pretend.
Adam Clay is the author of Stranger (Milkweed Editions, 2016), A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012), and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). He is editor-in-chief of Mississippi Review, a co-editor of Typo Magazine, and a Book Review Editor for Kenyon Review. He teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Southern Mississippi.
