PROSE POETRY
ADAM D. WEEKS
ROUGH PARAKLAUSITHYRON
After Car Seat Headrest
It seems I’ve been the bat from the cave: hurried, always turning left on the wind. I believe I’ve been thinking too much about parting and what it means to only go backwards because every time I blink there’s the inside of an empty frame and another minor collision. I’d say I’m better with blending, that water makes everything go down easier. I’d say I’ve learned to lean on the rain like a chorus and swallowed my verses, that I’ve been swaying slower to our instrumental swing until this—one photograph taped to the wall, nothing but the Brita in the fridge, the window shut and the curtains coated in the day’s dust, still. If it must be said I’ll say it like this: there’s no rain in this poem, there isn’t even music. All there is is the sound of the key turning in the lock, the door being made less shut.
Adam D. Weeks has a BA in Creative Writing from Salisbury University and is currently an elementary literacy tutor in Baltimore. He is the social media manager for The Shore, a poetry reader for Quarterly West, and a founding editor of Beaver Magazine. He won the 2022 Third Wednesday Poetry Contest, has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has poetry published or forthcoming in Fugue, Poet Lore, Sugar House Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Sycamore Review, Thrush, and elsewhere.