Three Poems
THE SHADOW OF THE EAGLE
No one’s heart is in my ear.
I clock what works until the blur
begins to thud. WTF? The eagle
flies over us, but I’m the only one
who notices it, because I’m always looking up
when everyone else is a baby or a puppy
tethered to the big fat milk of the earth.
Some wear blue dresses. Others
wear bows. A few just have fur
growing out of their ears. I grab an apple
from the fridge, and I crunch it
with my teeth. I crunch it into sauce
with a ravenous invective. I run my hands
through the galaxy of my hair, and the air
feels soft as a bunny or a drunk.
You know the kind I mean
always getting snared
in the lawnmower’s blades.
I’ve never been sorrier than I am
when that happens, though
for the record it’s never happened
to me. So what I’m saying is
I’ve never been sorrier
no one’s heart is in my ear.
But someone is a throwback
to an earlier tradition,
which means they don’t have the right
relationship to history
in the present being now
and then later in a bubble of what was.
Here in this instant
I am rummaging the gauze,
but not in it. I am interested
in the ones who make
the wildest lunges at the sea
or into space. The wound
is too deep to go into
a poem. You should see
the look on your face
when you read that. What you’re feeling
can’t be particularly stated
in the didactic, but it has something
in common with a profusion
of doves. The shadow of the eagle
never fades, but it passes.
Eventually. The shadow of the eagle.
The shadow of the eagle.
The shadow of the eagle.
THE WINE DARK SEA
Solving for the epithets,
I dissolve illuminati.
The Rimbaud manuscripts, the motion
picture calligraphy. And the heart-
worm medication for Bear
in the geraniums. He is tangled
in his leash again; I am tangled
in the dictionary, so large
that it hurts when it slams
into my battleship. I am
a rebellion against all official demands.
Here, add amplification. There, a force field
collapsible, carrots or a chair
across the room in a fit
straight into the gate of the audience.
Are you whistling the audience? I meant
“force feed” not “force field” back there,
but why change now in the midst
of this forbearance. The rabbits
are not John Keats. The rubber skulls
are not a march of death. But
everything important is insensible at first
so I am trying to be insensible
and maybe a little French
because all my superheroes detonate
the grassy tasting butter
naming their betters
in chains on a fiery lake,
which they got from Surrealism
and I got from Revelations,
which is where Surrealism begins
mystically with punk rock, and
where Joe Strummer first appears
as a Cadbury cream egg. And to think
even this is a poem. Then Taylor text messages
a puff pastry gobstopper, and Dean floats
the scrambled eggs to a zookeeper-baby,
obviously dreaming with stuffed animals
in her stroller. Meanwhile,
Sam and Chris collude
with clouds to include the clouds
in what is clearing already,
the light burning through it.
But the drawing board I go back to
is still only pages and pages
of ones mixed with zeroes,
so I have nothing to show
for my efforts at telling
ever and always
how to live and what to do,
which is improbable
and irrelevant to almost anyone
who isn’t a sea monster already
or curlicues of cursive
about to be a shipwreck.
PERSONAL POEM #13
“We must lose ourselves in the indecipherable”
—Noelle Kocot
Reading the wrong things
or reading things wrong. My head
feels baked in a cup of instant coffee.
We started drinking it in London
and now we can’t stop. How lucky
to go
to the clouds with all my problems,
which are minor amazements for them
of cholesterol mildly elevated
and blood sugar a little whackadoodle.
How does anyone spell the unspoken
when it’s staring at them in the mirror?
I don’t know,
but I’m trying
too hard to stay an age I haven’t been
for more than twenty-five years. And
I’ve been selling off pedals and amps again
now that Black Plastic closed, and I lost
my record store job, which was extra cash
keeping me afloat and maintaining
the possibility of new sonic exploration.
In the meantime,
Agnes has finished her college applications,
and Melanie is a thousand CrossFit workouts
into beaming like a sunflower orbiting
Mars. I just keep walking the dog
in a circle
to pee on things. That is,
he’s peeing on things, not me. I do
all my mark-making in contexts
like this one, which is a problem
that’s better than drinking too much
or being a washed-up glam rocker, but
worse than having a regular haircut and a job
that pays a living wage. I don’t know
why I’m being so morose. There are rasp-
berries
in the refrigerator, not even
hyphenated, despite my best efforts.
And this year I officially officiated
Russell & Alex’s wedding without messing it up.
I managed to write some
super-warbly, pixelated, falling-apart songs—
and Jesus Christ,
I’m sitting on a thousand poems
that no one wants to publish, but
they keep appearing anyway, mostly
disguised as the poems of Dean Young
still raving from the grave. Also, Mike and I started
a new magazine called SOLID STATE,
which I photocopied at work without asking
anybody, other than the aforementioned
holy son of god, and thus
my prayers
were answered
by me and my copy machine credentials,
which are 30178 if anyone would like to use them.
I’m into sharing too much with everybody.
Or at least it seems that way
from this bewilderingly long distance, but
really we’re so much closer than the limitations here
indicate how
a wild, vast meadow sprawls out before us—
so many things we can be, say, and do.
So many chittering undulating dimensions,
creative ways to lie about the facts
to tell the Truth.
∩
Matt Hart is the author of ten books of poetry, including most recently FAMILIAR (Pickpocket Books, 2022), Everything Breaking/for Good (YesYes Books, 2019), and The Obliterations (Pickpocket Books, 2019). Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including American Poetry Review, Big Bell, Conduit, jubilat, Kenyon Review, Poetry, and Lungfull!, among others. Currently, he lives in Cincinnati and plays in the post-punk/indie rock band NEVERNEW and edits, solders, and publishes the journal SOLID STATE.