Sunday Morning

Gunshots rang out
through the city—

it's not a new year
or a new type

of celebration.
My wife imagines

a splinter along
the heel of my foot

and soon I feel
it there, thankful

for the way pain
makes the sun

seem strangely
singular. An illegally

parked car seems
more legal this time

of day. Most rooms
have rugs—I'll take

mine with an urn slowly
fragmenting or maybe

just disappearing
into a flower.

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, Stranger, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. He co-edits TYPO Magazine and lives in Kentucky.