ADAM CLAY - "Missteps"

from The Real-World Problems We Face by 90s Meg Ryan

	/

lyrics

– MISSTEPS –

Main street divided
partially by trees,
and the grounds

of Ashland glow
white for a day or two,
at best, and then

there’s the whatever-
happens-next. I admit
I find some pleasure

in the thought of
a catastrophic end
to it all: the sun

swallowing up itself,
perhaps. All moments
are precarious, held up

alone in the glare of day.
What life reminds me of
is a door we’ve never seen

but somehow we have
to imagine a way
of passing through it.

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ADAM CLAY is the author of A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). A third book of poems is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Crab Orchard Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, The Kenyon Review Online, Black Warrior Review, Iowa Review, The Pinch, and elsewhere. He co-edits TYPO Magazine and teaches at the University of Illinois Springfield.
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