Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Thursday, June 25th, 2020.

Today's poem is by an American poet named Ryan Wilson. He's a poet, editor, translator,

literary critic from Baltimore, Maryland. He is the manager of the Association of Literary

Scholars, Critics, and Writers, and the editor of Literary Matters. And he has a collection from 2017 called The Stranger World, which is an award-winning collection

and a fascinating, fascinating book. I highly recommend you check this book out. It alternates

between truly delightful and awe-inspiring and at times deeply confusing which is in some

ways what's the best kind of poetry um the poem that i'm going to read today is from that collection

and it's called zinia it goes like this one day a silent man arrives at your door in outdated

suit threadbare and black like a lost mourner or a bible sail A silent man arrives at your door in outdated suit,

threadbare in black like a lost mourner or a Bible salesman who's been robbed.

Peniless, he needs a place to stay.

And you, magnanimous you, soon find this stranger reading in your chair,

eating your cereal, drinking your tea, or standing in your clothes

at the window awash in afternoon's alien light.

You tire of his constant company.

Your floorboards creak with his shuffling footfalls, haunting dark rooms deep in the night.

You lie awake in blackness, listening, cursing the charity or pride that opened up the door

for him and wonder how to explain yourself.

He smells like durian and smoke, but it's mostly his presence, irksome, fogging the mind up

like breath on a mirror.

"'You practice cruelty in a mirror.

"'Then practice sympathetic faces.

...