It’s a brass class of penny-whistleson branches, the black oystercatcherpicked bark; hole struck in a plastic lidburnt by butane. Melted, stingingmissiles marking territory, terror’sa truck right through the base oftrees. Turn down the sound. Talk starsalong the sidewalk that hangs in the fog;
I guess what I’m trying to say is: todaysounds the same as every othertinnitus day: tincture of fear, a tinprick flap that can’t be uncoiled from theflag mast. Sometimes, at night, I can hearthe clear-sound snap of sternand I begin to cry. There you are:there you are again.
Matthew Minicucci’s most recent collection, Small Gods (New Issues), won the 2019 Stafford/Hall Oregon Book Award in Poetry. His poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from numerous journals including The Believer, Ploughshares, POETRY, The Southern Review, and the…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2021