MATTHEW KIRBY’s poems have appeared in various periodicals, recently, Tar River Poetry, New Verse Review, Little Patuxent Review, Doubly Mad, and Literary Matters. He lives in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley with his wife and kids.
The Property
Jay’d had a few when he’d decided, true.
A trip out to the property he owned
but never stood or laid eyes on. The title
noted a lien and other complications.
A former easement had been covered by
the snows of time. Now inaccessible
by road, the land lay feral, swallowed up
by taxes, eglantine, and pine. The real
draw was his dad was, maybe, buried there
beside a boat shed on the dried up pond.
He changed his filters, packed his saddle bags
with Enid’s sourdough bread and beer
and went, despite the ice that week, into
a kind of heaven, all brown and white and raw.
Cardinal Salute
Direct my spirit north, to mining towns,
cold air descending from the foot of heaven,
to hemlocks stunted by the breath of God,
mud springs, slate caves and state park dirt bike trails,
a peeling porch, a girl in a gray bandana,
descendent of all races, fathered by
a machinist, though he was ordained in Lviv,
keeps up a fleet of Belarusian bikes
and rents them to a few vacationers.
Of late, his daughter’s helping him expand
through marketing consisting of exquisite
daguerreotypes, hand-colored, of her boyfriend
riding a two-stroke Minsk enduro bike
through granite-flanked ravines, past bobbing ferns.
He Didn’t Understand the Reason Why
He didn’t understand the reason why
they fired his wife, but he was kind of glad
and welcomed her back home with soft-boiled eggs
and oat milk lattes on the patio.
He told her two could live as cheap as one
and sex was better in the afternoon.
She mourned her sense of purpose for a time.
She ran and lost ten pounds and planted hostas
in each square foot of shade. She talked to birds,
really conversed with them about their edgy,
cantankerous chirps and status-conscious preening.
She went insane, frankly. But what that means,
today, is anybody’s guess, he thought.
They fired his wife, and he was kind of glad.
The Novel
He tried to write a novel. All that came
were smells released by melting snow on asphalt:
the funk of rotting leaves and cigarette ash,
comforting, sturdy scent of crank case oil
and antifreeze, high and hilarious bird scat.
It was all joy and had no conflict, just
the good, its irresistible appeal
to souls released from the retreating ice.
No agent wanted it. It sat on looseleaf
inside a cardboard box in his garage.
From there, it emanated waves of love
that cured all discord in the neighborhood.
The novelist grew doubtful, though, and crabby.
He shaved his beard and checked into an abbey.
Crow in a Snowy Field
What does it mean to see a crow in snow
pecking between dead rows of corn? Blue hills
adorn the distance: veins seen through a girl’s
pale wrist. The foggy winter air, the sound
of tires on wet macadam. My own weight
imprints the dripping field. Is it an omen
of demographic free fall? Why lapse back
into my mind, when I should rush the field
and grab the crow, restrain its hideous beak
between my thumbs and take it out behind
that shed I saw a mile ago, all ochre
except a turquoise door, and feed it tuna,
talk softly to it, walk it back to campus
tied to my ankle with a soft red thread?
MATTHEW KIRBY’s poems have appeared in various periodicals, recently, Tar River Poetry, New Verse Review, Little Patuxent Review, Doubly Mad, and Literary Matters. He lives in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley with his wife and kids.