Adam Day

Fable

The lumbering bear
swung its head

of hesitation
down an industrial

street. Brown bats
dropped onto

river grass;
the terror

of a long
fall. The cherry

spit out
its pit. A spider

crawled the wall,
tasting the brick

with its forelegs.
If we keep silent,

the stones
will cry out.

Translocation

Sternal notch,
coastal headland.

She walked
into the ocean.

Didn't want
to die. Just

couldn't tell where
the horizon was.

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Adam Day is the author of Left-Handed Wolf (LSU Press), 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 publisher of Action, Spectacle.