4 poems
Coal/Cole/Kohl
Why do some poets fetishize silence?
Yes there is need
For no human sound except
Ones’ stepping
Out picture plane when there’s
An artist en plein air
Upon prelude to what’s possible.
Coal/Cole/Kohl
I’m not interested in reading up on
Mountain Top Removal: it’s the action itself concerns me—
My mom more—me not amounting to mountain
Unless looking out from one means way to write my love for her
Who if I’d think directly enough of would lift
Top of my head off.
Coal/Cole/Kohl
Bull seals
This letter hear here on
Senate floor—electrons whirr—matter
Ardor tries to
Make dozed down nor
Cities on hills.
Sea never looks in its mirror.
Coal/Cole/Kohl
I know so
Little concretely
Except sidewalk.
Crossing road blocked
At university I go to but
Can’t parse blockage when I’m
Going with it—
An in-and-out a
Roundabout brooks unless
One looks
At map of Appalachia imagining its dirt.
Adam Strauss lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Most recently, he has poems out in Yes Poetry, Fence, and The Arsonist Magazine.