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Poem-a-Day

The only daily poetry series publishing new work by today’s poets.

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Poem-a-day

Summer City

In my damp inseam, the weather creases low and smooth.
Down the back and underneath the levy of legs. Tender

is the escape of water & salt—I jury to this known monument.
The camera washes the window, pushes the sheer orange

curtain away. In effect, it creates this timeline. That
I am currently a part of, like a lonely spider. It strikes.

There are these exhausting trips from
here to there: wasted time & the feeling
that everything is just the way it’s supposed to be.

You haven’t lived up to anything
and You haven’t lived at all.
Cursing dumb decisions like a plate of bad food

& then suddenly,
the begging silence
of how everything is now,
in this exact moment it appeared to me.

But, it goes cold and hardens.

It’s just a reminder:

every sentence is an ending and it is not.
There’s another sentence expected after it.

Copyright © 2026 by travis l. tate. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 22, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

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travis l. tate

travis l. tate
Courtesy of travis l. tate
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Sam Sax is the Guest Editor for June. Read or listen to a Q&A with Sax about their curatorial process, and learn more about the 2026 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
The Little Book of Cheerful Thoughts Jeffrey Harrison 04/22/2021
After Reading Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life On My 49th Birthday Dobby Gibson 04/21/2021
In her mostly white town, an hour from Rocky Mountain National Park, a black poet considers centuries of protests against racialized violence Camille T. Dungy 04/20/2021
Bobolink Didi Jackson 04/19/2021
Near the End of April William Stanley Braithwaite 04/18/2021
Venetian Siesta Joseph Millar 04/17/2021
I Never Wanted to Die Dorianne Laux 04/16/2021
Overlooking the Cortile David St. John 04/15/2021
Memory Is Blood Soluble Brian Sneeden 04/14/2021
Pastoral Forrest Gander 04/13/2021

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