Terry Adams
The Licker of Sweet Walls
Alien I come
to you who feeds me
in my dream-prowl;
half-wittingly, in your sleep,
the lingering prayer
of hunger, in kinship
of hands, and easy flip
of your pet door.
I prowl the cat-abandoned garage,
as headlights sweep
under the door,
a bed creaks somewhere—
makes me freeze, as
I wash and gobble
your gift, lick the dish clean.
I rake the kibble dust
out of the broom,
I lick the stiff flakes on the
crumpled foil, the frosting
petrified on cardboard.
I eat the tissue wadded
with face smells. And over here
the open plastic cooler smeared
with Coke and egg, mustard-streaked,
the rubberized pickle—
ah I climb in there
as into the very mouth of the beast
who provides in sleep, lick and wipe
and rub the richness,
wade into the mire of taste,
and twist and go with a claw
at the smooth corners, at crusts of sugar
popping like scabs. I snuffle
full face down onto the smooth, lickable
meal, until the thing simply
tips, teeters,
and falls, snapping the lid
closed, then I scramble upright,
gain the lick of the top and the new
crumbs which sprinkle my fur,
and twist all around until it is clean.
And there is no way out, nothing
gives way no heaped leaves,
no screen ajar, the snag-less
corners are tight, walls curve back,
the claws slip, the teeth strain
through the lips,
scrape for any edge, but there is
none, nor a breeze,
nor room for a tongue
to dissolve the dirt over a beaded crack,
and the air becomes dim with
the doped clock of home
calling, as from
the other foragers, chirruping
outside, back-walking, stretching up,
pacing and licking the
storm-drain floor,
calling and sniffing for the missing
one, who is dying here,
the breath restrained
with each breath more,
in the unknowing mouth,
the plastic trap of
someone sleeping.
Terry Adams has poems in Poetry (Chicago), Ironwood, The Sun, Witness, College English, Bellowing Ark, The Sand Hill Review, and elsewhere. His first collection, Adam’s Ribs, came out from Off the Grid Press in 2008. He lives in Ken Kesey’s infamous 1960’s cabin in La Honda, California. terryadamspoetry.net