"Rain" by Kevin Prufer

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 7, 2017   Rain   Kevin Prufer

Always, before rain, the windows grew thick with fog.   Mist descended over the evening rooftops   and rain made generalities of the neighborhood.   Rain made red leaves stick to car windows.    Rain made the houses vague. A car   slid through rain past rows of houses.   The moon swiveled on a wet gear above it.   The moon—a searchlight suspended from one of the airships—   lit the vague face peering through the windshield,   the car sliding down the rain-filled darkness   toward the highway. The men controlling the airships   were searching for him,   and he passed through the rain   as a thought passes through the collective mind   of the state. Here I am in this rain-filled poem,    looking out my kitchen window into the street,   having read the news of the day—   we are hunting them in our neighborhoods,   they have no place among us—   and now the car has turned the corner and disappeared   into the searchlights that make from the rain   glittering cylinders of power.            Copyright © 2017 Kevin Prufer. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I recently saw a searchlight cutting through rain. It illuminated and froze every drop. That seemed like an interesting way to think about how the power of the state cuts through the ordinary weather of our daily experience—brightening, dazzling, focusing our attention, bearing down on some of us." —Kevin Prufer   Kevin Prufer is the author of How He Loved Them, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2018. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.   Poetry by Prufer   Churches (Four Way Books, 2014) "After the Movie" by Marie Howe "Stirred Up By Rain" by Chase Twichell "The Rain Poured Down" by Dan Gerber Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038