Model of a City in Civil War

*Men carry a mattress retrieved

from a dumpster past the flooded

foundations of an unfinished

high-rise, an old woman catches

a pigeon in the folds of her dress

the dead smile and rise from swimming

pools or stand at attention

on stamps. The landscape can't believe

it's real—there is no ground

beneath it, like what mirrors do.*

**Adam Day** is the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Society of America and Kentucky Arts Council, and a PEN Emerging Writers Award. His work has appeared in *Boston Review*, the *Kenyon Review*, *American Poetry Review*, *AGNI*, the *Iowa Review*, and others.