Stranger

Poems

Adam Clay

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781571314635
• eBook ISBN: 9781571319098
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

"A heartbreakingly stunning collection dedicated to the unsung suspension of time that occurs when life suddenly goes awry." —Ada Limón Stranger is a book of both great change and deep roots, of the richest elements of the earth and the instability of a darkening sky. The third collection by Adam Clay dives into a dynamic world where the only map available is "not of the world / but of the path I took to arrive in this place, / a map with no real definable future purpose." Tracing a period of great change in his life—a move, a new job, the birth of his first child—Clay navigates the world with elegance and wonder, staring into the heart of transition and finding in it the wisdom that "Despite our best efforts to will it shut, / the proof of the world's existence / can best be seen in its insistence, / in its opening up." By firmly grasping on to the present, the past and the future collapse into the lived moment, allowing for an unclouded view of a way forward. "In language that is circular, stoic, and almost Zen-like, Clay attempts to remain himself in the face of life shifting underneath him." — Publishers Weekly "In those moments when one rearranges the furniture in a room or leaves the cast-iron skillet in the oven or contemplates an ink stain on the wall, Clay finds a space for deep inquiry." —Kazim Ali

THREE

This Is a Frame

A poem is occurring every moment

for example

that fluttering of mute flies

-MARIO SANTIAGO PAPASQUIARO

Most mornings like this one,

silent and sudden, and then

you’re awake

in a simple and dull sort

of beginning: the traffic

light along the edge of the couch

loud enough to mask

the intruding sun.

How to be noticed

in a world eager for absence,

eager for endless urging?

One’s senselessness:

a surprise

like the sound of the newspaper landing

on the lawn, enough

for the birds of another year,

stopping over silently,

moving on. I don’t like them,

I don’t like the railroads,

the ambulances, the constant

noise of night worth little

less than its weight.

But what to do with the opposite

of nothingness? Can night

fill in the space

a sentence should?

You know what I mean:

the sometimes dull

collision of words

rolling around,

void of success or even

the temptation of it. Sometimes

I sing a sentence out loud,

then wonder if anything has escaped

my mouth. Today somehow

felt like the middle of something.

The roads gleamed up from the ground

and remained in the eye long after

they had been left behind. I rarely

hold anything in the mind

the way I held those roads.

Strangers waved

happily.

Neighbors looked up, as if

expecting just one traveler that day

and that traveler was me. Even

the cardinals and yellow finches

and flowers paused

in those windless moments. As I pass

through the house in the night,

I feel like an unwelcome stranger,

a traveler on the other side of the world,

a place no one looks up from,

where the insects

mistrust movement from a mile away.

It’s startling how one’s perspective

of self can morph

moment by moment into

another self altogether. The news

remains what it is,

the type of living only night can explain.

And as for framework?

We think of beginnings, like crawling

or rolling over into

the light. Sometimes my voice

boards the airplane before me,

exists free of the weight we all eventually

learn to regret and forget.

An attempt at weather borders the window,

and the window allows one’s life

to pass more slowly than it should.

Like a horse track free of horses,

these days are a simple type of worry:

without a pause, we notice nothing. Without

nothing, the pauses precede

the notions we have of ourselves.

I speak

and then as if I’ve spoken,

you speak

and the walls echo the sound

back. I didn’t mean to look down

on the seasons and their sense

of reality. Nothing could make

more sense than returning to boredom

like these moments.

Tomorrow scatters the wind

like a destructive force

of front matter. Our neighbors

move elsewhere—t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author