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Ode
on a Lower-Midwestern Storm System
Third and final notice of the grievance filed down to nearly nothing but a sharp point some tattoo artist in Wichita uses to spell out those last lines by Keats on the lower back of a girl in lavender and
leather who wants to believe in something she’ll never have to see again, except backwards in the bathroom mirror. If you reverse the order you’ll still come to the same conclusion: a small pain (is truth is beauty) is something to be worn in a gothic font where the body hinges to turn on itself. If you’re ever on I-35 you can see for yourself that pasture is a green stretch of hip in the first person. And when the cattle bawl they bawl for the low thunder that all of us have felt pass through our chest on its way to rip apart a double-wide in upper Arkansas, and break the hearts of everyone who ever sat on the porch and dreamed of never leaving. You see a blue line makes every claim of ownership here. As if to say you know these words are not your own. Neither them nor the breeze that lifts the back of the shirt and promises
rain. ** Clay
Matthews has work published recently or forthcoming in No Tell Motel,
Diner, Unpleasant Event Schedule, the tiny, and Best New Poets 2005.
His chapbook, Muffler, is forthcoming from H_NGM_N B_ _KS in the fall
of 2005. He currently serves as associate editor for the Cimarron Review
while attending graduate school at Oklahoma State. Archived
at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/matthewsc_poems.htm |