Adam Strauss

 

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.