Twisted in Bed There Are Eyes Outside
by Matt Hart
Twisted in bed there are eyes outside. I need
a diet. I need a blasting into the wallpaper,
a fasting into the basement, storm sirens blaring
for the whoosh overhead. O water buffalo, come
to quench my first/last light my heaven/my earth,
my return to the baby in her do not disturb again,
whatever am I thinking -- sleeping through the non-place
places and the all too many mopey moments
I'm ashamed to remember, much less speak of
my life pasted into the shadows where I'm weeping
concentric. Meanwhile, outside/inside the waves
pound against my front door. They have some
routine questions to throw up in my face the dog
or the neighbor walking his stick saying there there
you poor piece of sapling when daddy gets you home
he'll break you in tutu. Being drinking,
none of this is my biggest problematic, rather a man
on the table drowning/in cardiac arrest right in front
of me. So me, and another man working with me,
watch him through the night and into the next
next night. We give him swimming lessons to keep him
alive. We show him the ropes/betting against him.
Somehow he keeps pounding his chest against the skylight-
alright, making his last best stand beneath
the sing-song whoosh/waves. Sometimes the touch out
on a limb is too much irrevocable, so one begins
aflutter and ends aghast in a corner, fanning the flames
of an invisible forest. Cool black air and I'm in
the wrong house again. I wade through the water coming
out of my mouth, put the key in the lock, and twist it
to make it luck. Everything's just as I've forgotten it
completely. I look in the mirror, and this is television.
Matt Hart is the author of the poetry collection Who's Who Vivid and two chapbooks, Revelated and Sonnet. He lives in Cincinnati where he is the editor of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety.