My dream lives close to my lungs.
Sometimes I feel it as a pen
spilling ink in the dark purse
of my breathing. My body
lives here in Colorado,
in an apartment with a few plants.
I am what the experts refer to
as history, a small totality
making its way to the future.
In the evening, I inherit death
as an idea, as a subject I'll be tested on.
Mid-afternoons, I take long walks.
I live by myself as the state lives
by itself in borders it had nothing
to do with. I, too, have a river.
If you ask, I'll tell you all about the light.


About this poem
"I wrote 'Colorado' as a persona poem for a friend who was moving to begin studies in an M.F.A. program. I'd been reading Grace Paley's poetry and desperately wanted some of her empathy and extraordinary consideration for others to be infused in a simple narrative of my own."
-Carl Adamshick

About Carl Adamshick
Carl Adamshick is the author of "Saint Friend" (McSweeney's Books, 2014). He lives in Portland, Ore., where he is an editor at Tavern Books, a nonprofit press dedicated to the publication of poetry.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience.

(c) 2016 Carl Adamshick. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate