h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

ADAM O. DAVIS

FEVER DREAM, 1499.

Christopher Columbus woke 

with a start and entered the galley 
like a fistfight. Houses, he announced. 

Houses, clad in termite tents, advance 

across deserts in innumerable rows 
of brick and embittered bedlam. 

Soon after mutiny revoked 

his freedom, his dream died feverishly 
in the hearts of Genoese contractors, 

whose chivalry left them coatless 

after every rainstorm, and the wilds 
of America remained a theme 

park dedicated to ghost stories.

TIC-TAC-TOE, 1541.

Pizarro played pianissimo 
            in a room of his making; 

not of gold nor silver nor 
            brass but red, all red, 

and in it he confessed 
            his miseries with an “X.”

Bison skull, seven standing men tall. 

Pyramid crushed to powder, the lethargic 
            dust of legacy. 

Winter: quavering fields of damp wheat, dull 
            breath eases the embers. 

Skins sleep on the backs of the sleeping. 

The ground Gnostic in its grace; every grain 
            a rune for rescindment.

WISHBONES, 1890.

Winter’s cognitive attic leaves trees like wishbones. 

They wince when the wind winds up along these lonely stretches 
              of calico wilderness. 

Edison is our only confirmation saint. 

Westinghouse watches Lake Erie burn. 

Part of a paint factory has foundered and the river whose water 
              supplied its pipes has ignited into a serpentine lash. 

A bell rings out for baptisms. 

Another is rung for the baptized. 

A third announces a moment of silence for all those who chose 
              such a time to profess their flameproof faith. 

If you listen closely you can hear their ashes ask the wind for 
              amnesty.

Rumor is a long-dead curse: dismissed by reason, reinvented by 
              popular demand. 

We fall asleep by the radio to dream of the air raids like our fathers 
              before us. 

Remembrance is the only act of significance. 

We break like rubber bands into the night.

THE BODY OF NEW JERSEY, 1952.

The body of New Jersey is sleepy.
The sky of New Jersey is imitation crocodile.
The people of New Jersey hold sunburn 

by its delicate hand. They say grace 
in the consequent blue light of their television sets.
In the morning sometimes a sparrow 

arrives at a window to ask for a dram of salt.
Politeness in such a situation is absurd 
but bad manners won’t do come celestial tea-time.

Right then the people of New Jersey listen 
to the body of New Jersey underneath the sky 
of New Jersey. No longer can they ignore the gin 

mills smoldering like an East European drama. 
No longer can they vigorously rake leaves 
in the wakes of their hand-me-down trees.

They weep openly in their backyards, beneath 
their smokestacks and overpasses, all sweetly 
candid under the fast sorrow of the tax collector’s case. 

The air is empty, as it always is. The air that has no 
voice though we bully it with flight and forest fires. 
At the television’s supper table we are still at odds 

with the sparrow. The sparrow, who sings, and we, 
who sing, and the supper, from its microwave, 
that sings. We sing and sing and soon forget.

FALLING MAN THEORY, 2010.

We are never alone.

We can’t smoke

these ghosts out.

They are in our homes

and can’t be broomed

to better haunts. 

We are falling.

We are all falling.