We pour the eyes in with a ladle
like post-holes half-filled
with mud-water, tap them in
with it if we have to. Sprinkle
hair onto bald, moist limbs and faces
like boiled potatoes—
sometimes we confuse female
for male and she is left looking like
a pubescent billy goat. We take
the liver and kidneys squatting
like frogs from the brown dresser drawer—
the flaps of flesh like mutilated leaves
pinned open with a system of strings.
The pliers are for pulling ears
untucked from two white-rasped
skull-craters. We shake the body
hard by the arms and penis
and more pop out; teeth fill
the mouth gap, and finally, the green
leakage of ordure falls from that button
of twisted flesh.

Adam Day was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and earned his MFA at New York University. He helps coordinate the Sarabande Reading Series and the Baltic Writing Residency in Latvia. He won the 2008 Phyllis Smart Young Prize in Poetry.