by Matt Hart

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Some minutes we study the bruise of an apple,
green as the sheep hidden deep in its meadow
My pants a massive teepee with nodding
dark horses     The clouds clad only in axes

*

you call them ours, but I know them
as the neighbors’      The books on your desk
still refusing to squall     One of my hands on the small
of your backbrace, cold as the plums in the black-

*

metal icebox       I have no idea what we do
while it snows, so I shovel, the pictures of thighs
wrapped in fat      My moneyed pockets nbsp;    We roast
the large goat without thinking of summer

*

the lemon zest in salted waves of happy hunting
Bores we are called when we don’t do the dishes
In the hills there is a monster, silos of grain
and a satellite antenna      He watches the game

*

while watching the game, pheasants and deer
all manner of protein      The three biggest
Vikings wander into a gymnasium, heads a little
out of it from all the heady damages      Danger

*

we embrace when the swords start to blow
the sticky words into a sentence     The lovely bodies
go to pieces when they see it in the offal     You are
wearing nothing, but a t-shirt with a rocket     Some flowers

*

blabber with tongues white as phosphor      You
shouldn’t have vouched for the thief
with all your lights on      The raging of the dying
now completely horseradish      I take you to exile

*

in the rump of the piñata      When we arrive
the whole kitchen is humming with domestics,
sacrificially speaking, and the ceremony
most finished, or almost     I am wooly

*

mammoth as the beach continues breaking
its promise      The curve of the landscape,
like a goddess or a shipwreck      I rush at the enemy,
and nothing is surprising, so I find you

*

in the arms we’ve been storing
in preparation for occasions like this one
I run the ghosts through with a sharp
paper airplane      So much intimacy

*

lost in the dog bowl      I thought I heard
Vicodin, but I guess it was victory, the lyrics
spilling out of your claw-footed deathery
Bathtub to rescue me      All the towels in the dryer

*

with our under things      We make blueprints
that stand up to scrutiny      The scrutiny
of detectives on the scent of your trail
I squeeze your cheeks from nose to tail

*

The orchestra pit proves itself prickly
When you sit on my lap, how the hipster kids wallow
The beer pours into us from sky and from ocean
We drink to the future, so we aren’t ever mentioned

*

in historical novels      The best things in chorus
are multiplied by thousands      Now we can live where
the elevator takes us      The houses fat as baby cows
The trees it seems may be keeping us awake




Matt Hart is the author of four books of poems, most recently Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012). A fifth collection, Debacle Debacle, is forthcoming from H_NGM_N BKS in 2013. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band TRAVEL. This fall he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin.

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