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By Meg Day

I knew I was a god
when you could not
agree on my name


& still, none you spoke
could force me to listen
closer. Is this the nothing


the antelope felt when
Adam, lit on his own
entitling, dubbed family,


genus, species? So many
descendants became
doctors, delivered


babies, bestowed bodies
names as if to say it is to make it
so. Can it be a comfort between


us, the fact of my creation?
I was made in the image
of a thing without


an image & silence, too,
is your invention. Who prays
for a god except to appear


with answers, but never
a body? A voice? If I told you
you wouldn’t believe me


because I was the one
to say it. On the first day
there was no sound


worth mentioning. If  I, too,
am a conductor of air, the only
praise I know is in stereo



(one pair—an open hand & closed
fist—will have to do). I made
a photograph of my name:


there was a shadow in a field
& I put my shadow in it. You
can’t hear me, but I’m there.


Source: Poetry (May 2020)

  • Living
  • Social Commentaries

Poet Bio

Meg Day
Meg Day is a Deaf, genderqueer poet and the author of Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street Press, 2014). Day is assistant professor of English and creative writing at Franklin & Marshall College. See More By This Poet

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