COUNT TO FIVE
I’m all out of place
—Rhys
I’m out here squeezing
through these melodic
streets like a staff through
a treble clef, marching
to the G of my dilated
motif. The afternoon
turns to overcast mush
& the models return
their snappable heels
& the hangers on hit
the store for menthols
& juice. I’m standing
on somebody else’s
street of pet names
trying to keep the dust
out of my sensitive
eyes. My jean pockets:
heavy with dad things,
but I’m still feeling
myself. Gentle flex
of self-delusion, luster
of Wednesday streets,
2pm full of gracious
sounds. A little stretched
like me, a little ambitious
at the bright angles.
Just because you’re
the one for me doesn’t
mean I’m one of the ones
for you. Just because
love is correlative doesn’t
mean we understand
the vowels’ interrogatives.
IT’S JUST A GUESS
so the record stops & all the old
notes thumping in the lead out
seem less summery & it’s easy
to overlook the latch unlatching,
the parking lots full of parkers,
& the local spiders who swirl
their own satisfactions. The whole
thing is less noticeably lavender
& nobody talks about any of it.
One day you’re in the mall
food court on the northside, eating
clammy pizza as the disaffected
teenage version of you behind
the counter checks sexts on a greasy
phone. “Let’s Stay Together”
is playing for some reason & the kid
doesn’t know the words. The next:
you’re infiltrated by another country’s
consonants & while its mountains
stand unpronounceable in the back.
I guess I’m doing fine wherever this
is, I say, whispery as static behind
the door I’m closing. The batteries
just went out in the vocal cords,
so there’s not a lot to say. Maybe love
is more vernacular than secular anyway.
IT’S ALL I HAVE / DAYDREAMING
after Emily Dickinson & Radiohead
I once got so high, I couldn’t
remember if I loved me as much
as I loved you. My mezzanined
slow dream. My slipstreamed
wish list. My knees wobble
like branches in the octave above
the sun clocks when you look at me
& the bees, the bees: phosphenes
swirling at 5 o’clock every day.
I once got so hyped, the buzzing
sounds cleared out my ears
& the previous Christmases
piled into questions. They broke
every debt. They reopened infatuations
as remunerated hexagons. Even
imaginary oceans have imaginary
plankton & I was stuck in the boathouse
of quotations. The water receded
like clockwork, so what the hell?
Turtles submerge when geometrically
convenient. Fish, too, finning
the brilliant current. All that blue
grandeur & none of it helps my missing.
The long dreams of my pops
& my daughter—the three of us
picking vegetables at the Indy market.
The three of us on a bench in Seattle
by the dazzling lake. That’s when
I look up from my sorry swim,
eyes as sheltered as artichokes.
A few dreamy breaths before
grief backstrokes primordially.
Adrian Matejka is author of The Devil's Garden (Alice James Books, 2003), Mixology (Penguin, 2009), and The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013) which a winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent collection, Map to the Stars (Penguin) was published in 2017. Somebody Else Sold the World will be published in August 2021 and his graphic novel, Last On His Feet, will be published by Liveright in 2022.