Matthew Johnstone

Elsa, my destroyed Field is still a place for you

By a red fur leap 

deliberate metals.

            Red, ankles down.

By one clay eye,

chemical blinking Danube,

            of Danube. By recovered

fingertips,

recovered glare. By

tearing rivers.

            /

By steel

            over the front yard,

I sicken.        

And red means slow, and danger,

and clearing deer bodies from

the north,

The popular thing is to

cry Indelicate Country, get

in their sun,

            vase up

            the rivers.

Illusion how

            metals are made.

            Sent out in irons.

By plaster.    

            /

    A wild line

            blazed off sigh,

            of fingertips, off collisions

            biting

                        my hand.

            Rang a mist of color

where

            the ochre shade officials.

Tracing stains to an iron

            cheek. 

A river is manufactured without

cruel points, slept

            mashing fish to coins.

If a thing widens overnight

that morning will be its widest.

            /

            Now the names

of streams simultaneously,

swerved against. By

                                    leering

            sounds, by veered

bottles.

Somebody's fault.

                        Them who scattered.

This, killer of veins

            picks up the bones.

Swallowing canoes, the mighty addiction.

            /

Some poor fool was cutting grass.

Red means away, living, red means

            the chamber collapsing,

red means danger, come

this way.

Pounded through  

            alkali.

                        Heaves

            origin,

            too, heaved.

By origins

            collected in. 

            Thrown moor, flares

            of twisting legs,

of

eating sparks off wet earth.     

            /

Ghastly, by

            fresh hells. By

                        foam, because oilskin,

                        because harpoons.

So further the

torrent will countenance no further.

In the watery human

body eyes are a grey servant's metal.

            /

One quality assumed

is aluminum waits

            in free things.

                        When lean                           

                                    flickers bodies

                        against the anemones.

Silent before your country.

By tangling steeples in the

            ashes of rough plants.

            /

My strange

            belief in the eternity of concrete.

            The fevers in this country.                                 

Lye in the fistfight,

            tore my sprawl,

            lacquered

                        fast into land.

Arrays of snarl, 

            by stray lash, by

                        trails of

            gnaw.

Returned as From Balconies

Let them come before your serious

repetitions. Again someone's lip on

                                                my teeth.

            Impermanent,

still I go at reformations, so,

permanent. 

                        There is interest in the

            other distance,

                        in shade drained hush.

And glare.

                        Loud about sleep.

            They tie things to me.

            Sheets of ragged tin, peppers,

            mirrors,

                        again peppers, sheets

            of reformed tin.

Light your skull off

mine. The

birds in your hair feint canopy.

                        This apparatus of

leashes is terrible.

Only the sleep is real, so,

            I throw the bed around.

            Hack dusty kelps of bone.

            Out usurping

                                    nights, 

rubbing the

                        ends of your teeth.

Hollow.         

            Filled by the silence filling

balconies.

Back to Top | Home

Psychic Meatloaf Poetry Journal