Adam Day's work has appeared in the Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Guernica, The Kenyon Review, Verse Daily, AGNI, The Iowa Review, BOMB, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for 2008 and 2009 Pushcart Prizes, and included in Best New Poets 2008. He is the recipient of a Kentucky Arts Council grant. He also coordinates the Baltic Writing Residency in Latvia, and is a contributing editor to the online literary journal Memorious.

 
 
 
 
 
THE INSOMNIAC

The pig with the black feet is an insomniac.
Long ago kids left a mask in the yard filled
with leaves. Now the insomniac wears it -
leaning his head down, snuffing, it sticks
to his moist snout, and he's Marlon Brando.
We find hidden, delicately stripped orange skins,
candy wrappers, and shredded letters
that name him, Albert. He's like a Russian-
enormous, vulnerable, perhaps tragic-
a lover of darkness - snow-capped trashcans,
coal bins, ships' holds, sinkholes. He wanders
into the nightwoods for days, sending back
sounds like the ripple of radio voices,
until it's not Christmas, just one more day
and he hangs by his slick black feet, unzipped,
the warm wet release lipping his chin.
Never promiscuous in his affections
he understood being human, the chasm
between the classes, but never condescended,
even when he must have known he'd be eaten
on paper plates.