"Florence, Kentucky" by Adam Scheffler

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( February 5, 2019 [Florence, Kentucky]( [Adam Scheffler]( So what if the old man on the bus is trying and failing to remember his dead mom’s face, as if the past were not a cartoon tunnel scratched on a wall? He’s still trying, and when did we forget our cattle-shoes and feather-parkas, how we carry with us a lowing sadness, an extinguished memory of flight? Today I’m going to count all the blackbirds between the prison and the Walmart where, right now, in its galloping sadness a bald man who sounds like a car horn is hector-lecturing his infant-hushing girlfriend—as her unhappiness, radiant as a cleat, sharp as an ice skate, sprays to a sudden stop. Right now, at the emergency crisis center right next to the gun store, the nurse feels entombed in hours like a fly in amber as the waiting room TVs spin despair’s golden honey— and I think of the ice I waded out on as a kid, of how often the world seems like it’s going to shatter, but then, miraculously, mercilessly, does not. [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2019 Adam Scheffler. Used with permission of the author. [Scheffler reads "Florence, Kentucky."]( About This Poem “This poem is a composite of various scenes of unhappiness I’ve stumbled across—not all of them having taken place in Florence, though all were in the tri-state area of Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. My partner is from that area and I’ve spent my summers there for the last decade. It’s a particularly beautiful and lush area in the summer right near the Ohio river—full of wild growth, big starry skies, fireflies, and copious deer—but it’s also a region full of particularly American forms of ugliness (big box retailers, gun stores, etc.). Once, just as I asked how polluted the river was, a full toilet came cruising down the water like a flotilla preceded by a twenty-foot navel of sludge. In some ways, that’s the feeling behind the poem—that there is beauty in how people go on despite the many degradations visited upon us.” —Adam Scheffler [Adam Scheffler]( Adam Scheffler is the author of A Dog’s Life (Jacar Press, 2016), winner of the Jacar Press Full-Length Poetry Book Contest. He is a preceptor in the Harvard College Writing program and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [A Dog's Life]( Poetry by Scheffler [A Dog]([’]([s Life]( (Jacar Press, 2016) "Failure" by Julia Johnson [read-more]( "Golden Shovel: at the Lake's Shore, I Sit with His Sister, Resting" by Sasha Pimentel [read-more]( "Poem for Jack Spicer" by Matthew Zapruder [read-more]( February Guest Editor: Clint Smith Thanks to [Clint Smith](, author of Counting Descent (Write Bloody Publishing, 2016), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a [Q&A with Smith]( about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our [guest editors for the year.]( [make a one-time donation]( [make a monthly donation]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038