In the Primate Building

In the Primate Building
by Holly Day
The monkeys stare solemnly back at me through the glass
and I know my days are numbered, that something awful
is going to happen to me soon. I’m not sure why
I know this. I’m also not sure if this something horrible
is confined only to me, or if the marmosets
mean something apocalyptic for all of humanity.

Back home, I scour the Internet for prophesies
involving harbinger monkeys, telepathic monkeys
psychic monkeys. There are just too many results
for me to go through them all. There are just too many
other people out there that are also
terrified of things monkey have told them

for the messages to not be real.

* * *
Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The Long Islander, and The Nashwaak Review. Her newest poetry collections are A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press),  In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), I'm in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), and The Yellow Dot of a Daisy (Alien Buddha Press).

What inspires you to write and keep writing?

I write because I love to write. It’s a purely selfish activity for me. More than anything, the joy I get from writing has carried me through many dark periods in my life. I can honestly say I’m happiest when I’m writing, whether it’s poetry, nonfiction, or fiction—I love it all.

Unencumbered

Unencumbered
by Holly Day

oh, the whirr of wheels and wire and endless
scraping of skin on silvery track, my sleep, the scrape of skin on
splintered wood and wondering what they’ll say when they find me,
the rush, the roar, racing toward the light
the fading, floating echo of speed
oh, the imagined eyes of an imaginary crowd as the train
pull into the station, the concrete landing,
the eyes of the crowd opening wide
as the train pulls in and the hands reach out
trying to catch me, stop me,
much, much too late
oh, I love a train

* * *

Holly Day lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction book publications include Music Theory for Dummies and Walking Twin Cities, while her poetry has most recently appeared in Skidrow Penthouse, Iota, and Iodine Poetry Journal.

What inspires you to write and keep writing?

I’ve been writing my whole life (as most writers have) and for publication since I was 15 (nearly 24 years ago), so I don’t really think about what keeps me writing. It’s more a compulsive routine for me now than anything—forgetting to sit and spend some time on my writing would be as strange to me as forgetting to make my children lunch. What inspires me to write? It’s everything in the world around me. It’s my cat, my family, my garden, newspaper headlines, TV sitcoms, the dead squirrel I had to fish out of the rain gutter yesterday, etc., etc.. It would be impossible to write about everything that inspires me.