When my best friends were elephants, things
were easier. They slept next to me in bed,

gray bodies wrapped in my Superman sheets,
until they grew too big. Then I made up

sleeping bags on the floor lined with towels
and old baby blankets. Kentucky winters,

colder than you’d expect, are full of storms
and power outages, and elephants need warmth,

need soft pillows when grass won’t do.
Mostly, elephants just don’t like to be

alone. And somehow, they always remember
the way home. In Africa, a mother elephant

visits her child’s grave every year on the path
through the plains. Elephants in zoos

befriend monkeys and kittens. I think
my friends, long gone, were lucky to have

me instead: to live in a house with central
heating, veggies in the fridge, a backyard for the kids.

–Morgan Adams,
In Nonestica (2013)
Accents Publishing

Morgan Adams was born and raised in a bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky and wrote her own first “book” at the age of five. She graduated from Berea College and earned her M.F.A. in poetry from Indiana University. Her work often draws upon myth, folklore, and family history.