Christina Matthews has given us some wonderful persona poetry (Wild Birdfeeder, Western Honey Bees). This poem is different, although when you read it, you might feel the stirrings of the Muse, sense the edges from which a persona poem could very well grow out of this narrative … if this were Referential Magazine, you’d all be challenged to write a piece that refers to this now. If you haven’t read Referential yet, do it today. And write and submit a referred piece. Or visit our own prompts page and write and submit something for that. Or just write whatever you feel like writing and worry about where to submit it later.
The Beginning of the End
By Christina Matthews
Things started to speak, I know precisely when:
last Spring, mid-morning, a dry sun-glare warmed
my feet, your feet, dangling off the bed.
(I forgot to draw the curtains that night,
and the night before, and many after).
I recall the heat.
On the day we drove up to Atlanta,
we left the chalky clay roads behind us.
At the High Museum, ignored King Louie,
his used silverware, and bobbled
our big heads next to the busts of dead men,
laughing as if we were so far away from it (history),
that end of the lot.
And shortly before, your filed papers,
divorce, my thin shell of “no strings attached,”
a cape of indifference, a daily
change of socks–simple–the ownerless box
of Godiva truffles is whose? Who? You?
You pressing your palm flat against my palm,
between us, small gaps in a make-shift book.
Later, the fat hydrangeas thudding,
thudding against the white vinyl siding,
awake all night, the dodo in my mind
lecturing trees about humanity,
the microwave blinking electric green,
the blender’s orange lights reflecting like
eyes watching my every move through the house.
Outside, tree branches waving Hello, You,
Hello? A constant red blur is a flag for future,
or a cardinal streaking past the window?
And then the lullabies of space, of time
of white pictureless dreams, noiseless
mutterings beneath the silence. Your sleep
cooling the back of my neck, still awake,
still awake, calculating the precise
moment the house caves in, splits down the middle,
a torn cardboard box, time when everything,
even the view, fails to around. Shapeless
clouds like other clouds.
And the voices emerged
from their hiding places, scurried like mice
or children from the woods, slinked in silk robes
onto city streets, smelling hot like asphalt,
the inevitable commanding all
my attention, sounding out like tornado sirens
in an abandoned town, noise echoing
from the dirt and back.
And now, on the couch, a constant, low white
noise playing from the TV: ants marching.
And now, on the couch, the actual and
entangled lines of our bodies while they pulse
through the hundred tints of living. Our arms braided,
hands hanging like two bowed heads,
two torn book-bindings,
two top-heavy blossoms.
Silence. Nothing speaks,
save everything.
Nice story of now and when. So much captured during life and a day.
Thanks for the Referential shout out! Have you taken the editors challenge yet 🙂
Quite a journey described here. I love the last two lines.
Suddenly the House Is a Marshland
Christina Matthews poem The Beginning of the End appeared here in October. Christina’s poetry gives voice to different characters, sometimes they are people, other times they are animals, other times they are inanimate. But the voices are always distinctive. Suddenly the House Is a MarshlandBy Christina MatthewsNo way out. The door, gone. The windows, barred by branchesof leafless trees. The carpet, a mud-muck, a quicksandmaking it impossible to get out of bed.Ask me if I’m okay, I’ll say: “Yes, I’m fine.”Turn over, slide my eyes closed, hold my breath against the nightas the swamp rises up in the corners of …