32-inch Aubade with Captions
Open
In the opening scene, a topography of linen
& leg, & leg, & leg. One knee says to another
something innocuous & urgent, a strand of blue
smoke looped from wick to hip & cut
across the surprise of the thigh’s reply. You
reached for my hand & I knew what you knew—
& then what no one else could—the gesture
on screen a synonym for a bridge we’d crossed
years ago—then burned—together.
Closed
If there is a sun—a sky, even
with heat & color, a lover
to be had, to have been without
guile or refrain, not practical
but still preordained—
If there is a fawn-freckled
oblique—case or quiver—
which both Pythagoras
& Virilio might assent
is skewed sweet less by light
& more by the early march
of time— If there is less
positioning of eyes & perspective
of limbs, less VEE-VEE more PAH!—
I missed it. I was SETTINGS >
ACCESSIBILITY > SUBTITLES +
CAPTIONING > ON > ENGLISH CC >
YES > STYLE > LARGE —no—
MEDIUM with the O of [“I LOAF YOU”]
across the [SOFT MOAN] of their kiss.
Copyright © 2026 by Meg Day. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 20, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem uses ableism—specifically audism—as its provocation. It engages ASL [American Sign Language] glosses and language from the remote-control instructional manual to inform its politics. I’m interested in tightening the lens on the way audism seeps into quiet, domestic moments and arrives already baked into our private infrastructures. I’d guess few people know the difference between open and closed captions. I’d guess fewer understand the social or personal impact of collectively choosing closed captioning—for artistic, aesthetic, or ableist reasons—when open is an option.”
—Meg Day
Meg Day
Meg Day grew up in California’s Bay Area and received a BA from the University of California, San Diego, an MFA from Mills College, and a PhD from the University of Utah, where they were a Steffensen-Cannon Fellow and poetry editor for Quarterly West.