Adam Graham

Daily Bread

On Sundays we never made dark rye--
that was Wednesday bread
and I was the crankiest bastard
who ever did sell bread on Sundays.
If I had sour, moldy and stale rye
I’d have sold it and kept the money myself.

Once they came in asking
me and the German girl for it.
I tried to tell them all with my eyes:

that I could hear foghorns on clear nights
from my bedroom window-
sounds that echoed like an Indian love song
-sang out like Sirens on a cliff.

that a constant, steady breeze
rocked me asleep,
on nights that I could sleep.

And that I wrote this poem
from the darkness of my bed
an old down, my desk
a dream, my notebook
and sleeping pills, my pen.

But they just wanted rye on Sundays
But rye is Wednesday bread.

Adam Graham is a poetry student living in Boston but moving to Portland, Maine. He has been a freelance writer for a few years and has been published in The Burlington Bohemian, College Streets Magazine, The Poet's Corner, Vox, and has worked as a poetry editor for Soundings East.