The Noctambulists (excerpt)

Clayton Adam Clark

V.The problem with the underworldis that I didn’t know how many daysI was dead or that I even was,which are not unrelated. Orpheusat least knew where he was going.Well past the somatic and metabolic deaths,E’s only hope for resurrectionwas O’s refusal of her social end.Whose hope? What a trip to see her there,playing chess with your grandmother,and suspect you aren’t asleepbut maybe were. You’ll want tobeat the daylights out of the manholding her under. That feeling’s olderthan your blood. But O understood:best to forget the whys and hows.Even the whats. To surface her, youtrain your eyes on light that shimmersoverhead. Then kick like hell.

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Clayton Adam Clark lives in St. Louis, his hometown, where he works as a public health researcher and also volunteers as a board member for River Styx magazine.His first full-length poetry collection, A Finitude of Skin, will be published by Moon City Press in 2018. He earned an MFA in poetry at Ohio State University and is currently studying to become a clinical mental health counselor.

Mid-American Review

Volume XXXVIII, Number 2

Bowling Green, Ohio

Bowling Green State University

Editor-in-Chief
Abigail Cloud

Managing Editor
Julie Webb

Poetry Editor
Abigail Cloud

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