Poems by William Matthews

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The Waste Carpet

No day is right for the apocalypse,

if you ask a housewife in Talking

Rock, Georgia, or maybe Hop River,

Connecticut. She is opening a plastic bag.

A grotesque parody of the primeval muck

starts oozing out. And behold,

the plastic bag is magic;

there is no closing it. Soap

by William Matthews

Well, You Needn’t

Rather than hold his hands properly

arched off the keys, like cats

with their backs up,

Monk, playing block chords,

hit the keys with his fingertips well

above his wrists,

shoulders up, wrists down, scarce

room for the pencil, ground

by William Matthews

The Bear At The Dump

Amidst the too much that we buy and throw

away and the far too much we wrap it in,

the bear found a few items of special

interest—a honeydew rind, a used tampon,

the bone from a leg of lamb. He’d rock back

lightly onto his rear paws and slash

open a plastic bag, and then his nose—

jammed almost with a surfeit of rank

by William Matthews

The Snake

A snake is the love of a thumb

and forefinger.

Other times, an arm

that has swallowed a bicep.

The air behind this one

is like a knot

in a child’s shoelace

come undone

by William Matthews

The Cloister

The last light of a July evening drained

into the streets below: My love and I had hard

things to say and hear, and we sat over

wine, faltering, picking our words carefully.

The afternoon before I had lain across

my bed and my cat leapt up to lie

alongside me, purring and slowly

growing dozy. By this ritual I could

by William Matthews

The Search Party

I wondered if the others felt

as heroic

as safe: my unmangled family

slept while I slid uncertain feet ahead

behind my flashlight’s beam.

Stones, thick roots as twisted as

a ruined body,

what did I fear?

by William Matthews

Why We Are Truly A Nation

Because we rage inside

the old boundaries,

like a young girl leaving the Church,

scared of her parents.

Because we all dream of saving

the shaggy, dung-caked buffalo,

shielding the herd with our bodies.

Because grief unites us,

by William Matthews

Harvest

A few rats are gnawing

along the floor of the silo,

but what are a few rats

against this tower of food?

It takes 75,000 crocus blossoms

to make a pound of saffron.

And after today out there

in the heat, nobody dreams of food.

by William Matthews

Mingus In Diaspora

You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out,

like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon,

or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost,

who took it all in, or that he was big as a bus.

He would say, and he did, in one of those blurred

melismatic slaloms his sentences ran—for all

the music was in his speech: swift switches of tempo,

stop-time, double time (he could talk in 6/8),

by William Matthews

Men At My Father’s Funeral

The ones his age who shook my hand

on their way out sent fear along

my arm like heroin. These weren’t

men mute about their feelings,

or what’s a body language for?

And I, the glib one, who’d stood

with my back to my father’s body

and praised the heart that attacked him?

by William Matthews

Skin Diving

The snorkel is the easiest woodwind.

Two notes in the chalumeau:

rising and falling.

Here is the skin of sleep,

the skin of reading, surfaces

inseparable from depths.

How far does the light go down?

Wouldn't we like to know.

by William Matthews

Piano Lessons

Sometimes the music is locked

in the earth's body, matter-

of-fact, transforming itself.

So our work could seem useless,

even tautological, as if music

were weather, as if there were never

practice, finger-oil on the keys,

dust in the curtains like the silence

by William Matthews