Matthew Ian Kelsey
Gloam

I have heard the call by now.
Once, in the trodden dirge

of sod and toil. Once in you.
I have been collecting things.

I do not speak unless
broken into first.

I do not forget the sound of people:
greedy weeds fingering boats

long gone, all wet rot
and gout of songs.

I will not stop turning
the God body over.

I will ignore the air that fills
with rasping and yellow blood—all that

unspeakable trash. That hollow collective.

Field of City Lights at Night

I.
My least favorite word as a child was “visitation.”
I didn’t understand “the law” or “the rights”
my mother owned. I didn’t understand
the word “own”. Cigarette smoke
spiderveined its way through her house and scattered
across the living room furniture. It filtered through
our noses and mouths, then clung on tight to our clothes.
There were few toys. The ceilings were low.
Visitation meant hiding under the bed. It meant “no,”
and my right to say “no,” though in vain.

II.
On the way to our mother’s house, my brother would stare
through the car window. He memorized every street’s name.
He quizzed himself against the system of roads, checking in
with our grandmother just to be sure. While he spoke, his eyes
continued their work outside, stitching names together,
backwards, like a story he’d rather forget. I trusted my brother
to lead us home. “Home” was a word that meant anywhere
other than where we were going—that smoky, loveless trap
of clapboard and metal. I’d hoped I’d be able to keep up
if he ever used the map in his mind and ran with it.

Memory: A Two-Way Street

I.
My least favorite word as a child was “visitation.”
I didn’t understand “the law” or “the rights”
my mother owned. I didn’t understand
the word “own”. Cigarette smoke
spiderveined its way through her house and scattered
across the living room furniture. It filtered through
our noses and mouths, then clung on tight to our clothes.
There were few toys. The ceilings were low.
Visitation meant hiding under the bed. It meant “no,”
and my right to say “no,” though in vain.

II.
On the way to our mother’s house, my brother would stare
through the car window. He memorized every street’s name.
He quizzed himself against the system of roads, checking in
with our grandmother just to be sure. While he spoke, his eyes
continued their work outside, stitching names together,
backwards, like a story he’d rather forget. I trusted my brother
to lead us home. “Home” was a word that meant anywhere
other than where we were going—that smoky, loveless trap
of clapboard and metal. I’d hoped I’d be able to keep up
if he ever used the map in his mind and ran with it

_ _

Matthew Ian Kelsey was born in Glens Falls, New York. He studied at Boston University as an undergraduate, and is currently at the University of Washington in Seattle working toward an MFA in creative writing. He was a finalist for the 2009 Pavel Srut Fellowship and will be taking workshops in Prague in summer 2009.

<< Back to Issue 13, 2009