Swimming in Lake Superior in May For a severed moment see both worlds, / the above, the below, halved by a membrane of light. / Sound dampens to water and sates the ears. / The boundaries of air become visible. / Watch the sky above, a rubbed horizon (8 Poems, Issue 2 – August 2018)
Understanding Each Other in the Dark The shadow messages from passing traffic shine through the bedroom curtains to flash their plans onto my ceiling. They tell me that things should be clean. The darkness of my room reveals all of the world’s imperfections. (Unbroken Journal, Issue 18 – July 2018)
The Closing Door When she woke up, Claire asked if she’d been screaming. “No,” I replied. “You did make a moaning noise, though.” “At least I could make some sound,” she said. (Mojave Heart Review, Issue 2 – June 2018)
Understanding It bothers me for some reason when a friend / likes one of my poems and distributes something I’ve written / like she’s tossing money from the caboose / of a train that’s not moving not / to say that I feel I am the engine she’s coupled to / although my inertia is seldom in question (Bird’s Thumb, February 2018 Vol. 5, Issue 1)
Urban Hobo Signs Sneakers tied together, hanging on power lines: / Drugs. Inexpensive succor. Angers mostly contained. / Threadbare couch on an unmown lawn: / Rampant disregard for future comfort, the government bureaucracy. (Riggwelter, Issue 5 – January 2018)
Road Rash The scabs on my arm grew thick and cracked, like a dry mud flat. The deep lacerations on my leg knit together imperfectly, colliding and reforming in chaotic fractal patterns, like sugar crystals in a petri dish. Lizard scales of scar tissue bathed my left side in callus. My face was puffy and turned colors human flesh should not assume. (Coffin Bell, Vol. 1, Issue 1 – January 2018)
Cast Away Despite the constant heat we got a lot of work done during the day. Work was our only escape from boredom. At night you would curl up next to me and we would remember what life used to be like. Ice cream. Electricity. Other people . (Marauder Literary Journal, November 2017)
Migrations I remember all the shades of blue I’ve ever seen. How the pigment on a canvas seems to absorb the eye into itself, how the blue of the sea rejects my focus. How every person with blue eyes is untrustworthy, but each person is untrustworthy in their own unique hue. (Ellipsis Zine, September 2017)
Gravity Falls, The Dusk is Claimed Encased eyes open just as you glance away. / Sleep is a mirage of inattention. / Brick upon brick upon brick / the ledger of your new canvas. / Create, draftsman. (Burning House Press, June 2017)
Unrequited Lust Look at us chat, like normal chits / Desire never enters the frame, that hungry understudy. / To calm, I imagine some ash-light moth alighting / on a golden petal adrip with dew. I cliché my way away. (Five:2:One Magazine volume 15)
Relationship Status Tenth Month Her logic dodged his. He was too structured for her: she was a skipping stone, he was the tenuous tensile skin of the water. Eventually her rant would stop and she would excuse herself to the bathroom or sometimes leave the apartment entirely. (Unbroken Journal, April 2017)
Map to the Stars Want for a long time / scary deformed / anything interfering / by this ring / kiss the bride / on hope (Unlost Journal, September 2016)
The Backyard Garden He feels like the hot sun shines only on him. As he turns and turns the dirt he imagines the individual rays of light born millions of miles away in the nuclear furnace of the sun seeking out his poor back, embedding themselves deep in his skin. (Cheap Pop, August 2016)
Capitalism and Art If our true worth can be itemized like stones /
then we can be stacked in towers to mark truer paths. / Goatblood weighs the same as a Senator’s. (Dirty Chai Magazine, Missed Connections )
Argument Words seldom agree / across borders separating / our foreign lives (Beechwood Review Issue 2)
Four Poems Bone laughed and spit. To mend / I’d need a better tailor. There was sawdust / in my lap, straw tickled my intestines. / Leaning back, I placed my head / in the crook of elbow glass. – from Bone and Rag Man (Syzygy Poetry Journal Volume 1, issue 3)
Two Prose Poems Without formal training I cast my own demons out with Goodfellas quotes and guesses at scripture. Keep ye soul safe at this font of bullshit. keep ye arms and legs safely inside at all times. – From Come the Inner War (Unbroken Journal March/April 2016)
Hollow Man Each morning he floats up / from his waterlogged deepdark dreams / and begins the day’s search for ballast. (Dead King Magazine issue 1)
Three Poems We talk about progress / but the only thing we’ve learned / is how to build better sandbags. – from Entropy Garden (Gyroscope Review issue 16-2)
Calamity …now he never tries and she never thanks him. They both prefer it this way. They are divided by yet another slash mark, a fraction line underneath a fraction line underneath a fraction line reducing them straight down to the earth’s core. (Unbroken Journal January/February 2016)
All it Takes is Substance to Reveal The lever, the pulley, the wheel and axle. / Where is the simple machine for despair? / Do we lift its weight, or simply shift it? (Queen Mob’s Tea House October 2015)
The Oracle She said only the tattooed get noticed / by the great Eye that watches our skins. / We’ll all get treated fairly. And judged. / And saved and strung up and weighed. (Rawboned issue 5)
The Color of Skin I stripped naked and stood against the freshly painted wall. “Can you see me?” I asked. “Let’s do the ceiling,” you responded. (Vestal Review issue 45)
Gasses Less Noble The thin air is full of reactionaries / pushing cartloads of empty doubts. / Honest John payloads never lie / If you smell gas, cover your mouth (Contraposition volume 4)
The Sump Pit All that year I came down to lie beside you. Some nights I’d fall asleep on our stone bed, waking the next morning stiff and sore and unable to move. The smile never faded from your cold stone expression. (Litro Magazine)
Dark Times …the dust of our little yard would rise up, if you stomped hard enough, to create little gray clouds large enough to hide ourselves in. (Smokelong Quarterly issue 38)
Matthew Smart 