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.