Clay Matthews
The First Glass of Bourbon
The minute bends toward a valley
of neverminds and empty shot glasses.
2:48 p.m. and what transpires right now
is between god and the freezing rain,
a raccoon sleeping in the dumpster.
My friends who are working or singing
this moment, who I hardly know anymore
except for the photographs and scars,
are you happy? are you home? do our lives
transmit the love we feel for each other
through these small spaces we occupy
on maps and driveways? I am a year older,
a year less. Many of the things we said
we would do, we have not done.
But even now (even now), where
the winter turns the branches crystal,
I run my finger along the edge
of the world and wait for your song.
Mausoleum
The privet, heavy now, bends
itself before god, the live oak rests his limbs
on these ancient tombstones. The glass roads
look like all the other roads, but the people
go nowhere. The smell of fresh wood
burning, chimney smoke in the distance.
Ice covers the holly and nandina―
life still life, after all, underneath.
Wintergreens reduced to oils, an overdose
rumored to cause illiteracy, from the book
to the window, to the book again―
Cordelia, he said, How is it you love me?
The brother who shed his leaves. This sister
who shed her clothes by the fire.
Sweet gums balled in the gutter,
the brittle promise of preceding the wind.
To be so close to the thing
trapped there inside. Just think
what the weight of the world hasn’t broken.
Clay Matthews has recent work published or forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Blackbird, The Kenyon Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of three books of poetry: Superfecta (Ghost Road Press), Runoff (BlazeVOX Books), and Pretty, Rooster (Cooper Dillon Books). He teaches at Tusculum College in East TN, and is working as poetry editor for the Tusculum Review.
Return to July 2013 Edition
The minute bends toward a valley
of neverminds and empty shot glasses.
2:48 p.m. and what transpires right now
is between god and the freezing rain,
a raccoon sleeping in the dumpster.
My friends who are working or singing
this moment, who I hardly know anymore
except for the photographs and scars,
are you happy? are you home? do our lives
transmit the love we feel for each other
through these small spaces we occupy
on maps and driveways? I am a year older,
a year less. Many of the things we said
we would do, we have not done.
But even now (even now), where
the winter turns the branches crystal,
I run my finger along the edge
of the world and wait for your song.
Mausoleum
The privet, heavy now, bends
itself before god, the live oak rests his limbs
on these ancient tombstones. The glass roads
look like all the other roads, but the people
go nowhere. The smell of fresh wood
burning, chimney smoke in the distance.
Ice covers the holly and nandina―
life still life, after all, underneath.
Wintergreens reduced to oils, an overdose
rumored to cause illiteracy, from the book
to the window, to the book again―
Cordelia, he said, How is it you love me?
The brother who shed his leaves. This sister
who shed her clothes by the fire.
Sweet gums balled in the gutter,
the brittle promise of preceding the wind.
To be so close to the thing
trapped there inside. Just think
what the weight of the world hasn’t broken.
Clay Matthews has recent work published or forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Blackbird, The Kenyon Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of three books of poetry: Superfecta (Ghost Road Press), Runoff (BlazeVOX Books), and Pretty, Rooster (Cooper Dillon Books). He teaches at Tusculum College in East TN, and is working as poetry editor for the Tusculum Review.
Return to July 2013 Edition