Adam J. Gellings

In the Afterglow of a Molotov Cocktail

We are back at the apartment before darkness

truly settles.

The empty bottle. Your empty glass.

The potatoes rupturing in butter.

Beneath a crisp toss

of cumin you ask

had I heard the violins?

but quietly—so I hear it

as violence.

How perfectly it fits below the eyes

of the palm-yellow warbler

last of its kind to steer south,

crowned in her nest on the balcony

where sharply slanted roof meets

white brick wall.

She’s always like that: pretending everything is fine

in her replica of warmth.

On the radio     a pause

                         after casualties

                         how it is no longer safe

                         just to be

                         [inside]

The obscure night.

The color of the bougainvillea

& you

sitting cross-legged by the fire,

almost bodiless.

Adam J. Gellings is the author of the poetry collection Little Palace, & his poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, Copper Nickel, The Louisville Review, Willow Springs & elsewhere. He lives in Columbus, Ohio & teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Ashland University
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