Adam Gianforcaro

by Adam Gianforcaro

Gestation and chamomile flower:
I am my mother again. Notice now

how many times one can near death.
Birth, blood loss, someone else’s sick

pushed through, pushed into.
Which is to say: open window,

wind’s open mouth, a phone call
from childhood. The water is warm

and remains so. I sink into it,
think: womb again. A breeze

from the next room, a scythe
parting the drapery. I have learned

that panic passed down is a form
of survival: the gift of hardening

despite wrinkle-soft fingers. To perceive
far past the drip-drop faucet.

There’s an empty tub when the shadow
steps in, the water scarcely rippled.

Adam Gianforcaro is the author of the poetry collection Every Living Day (Thirty West, 2023). His work can be found in The Offing, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Delaware.

by Adam Gianforcaro

Until it can touch or teethe or tear through,
the wind can try to wail all it wants.

Wind makes no sound on its own, not without
the field of sagebrush or a whistle of window

to leave behind its greasy fingerprints of song.
Not without a partnership I mean.

I too can wrap myself in the breeze. The least
we can do as bodies is to be a body

the air can brush past, to be a catalyst
for transcribing the tidings of ghosts.

This is what it means to write a poem
for the living: to find a field

and let the rabid-mouth gale
turn your body into open-air theatre.

Adam Gianforcaro is the author of the poetry collection Every Living Day (Thirty West Publishing House, 2023). His poems can be found in The Offing, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Delaware and tweets at @xadamg.