Available to purchase now at:
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-residents-by-matthew-j-friday/
0 Comments
I
see osprey hover, folding back wings, reconsidering - I point to a walker on a phone and hope she sees the dive - this moment I am not me I am osprey rising up fishless and faltering, hauling itself over the rooftops leaving questions about less fish, lower river, fewer tree swallows, the walker a distant rectangle of light. Published in The Dawntreader #66, spring 2024. At a look-out just west of the Mosier Tunnels
a herd of tourists admire the view, comment that the island down there with the white jetty and a brick house would be a good place to stay. A $500 a night kinda hotel place. They all nod. I thought it was the sacred Native burial island, confusing it with the one upstream. Feeling displaced justice, I quietly condemn them all as fattened city day-trippers, electronically assisted and ignorant. I am the ignorant one. This is Eighteenmile Island, or locally known as Chicken Charlie’s Island. From 1915-1963, Charles Reither lived there and died there, had a chicken ranch / never had chickens. Truth lost. Now a $500 a night day dream. Published in the Potomac Review #74, Spring 2024 Flying Kites at Namche Bazaar, Nepal
On a stony, bare palm of land held aloft a bent wrist of a valley children as small as Harry Lime’s ants flew kites, tiny red and blue birds that blessed the terraced town with a memory more movement than the surrounding mountains, geisha-ed in cloud and snow. Namche Bazaar. That name spell- ing pounding heart, supplying the base camp of my belief that the smallest steps matter. Different River On the bank of the Deschutes River, past the dog turds, out of the way of the walkers talking loudly in passing barks. the river is wide, shallow, slashed with boulders that tear the silk ragged. Panic attacks on halt. Here I meditate in March, the warming afternoon sun kaleidoscoping closed eyelids, iPhone app counting down the ten minutes of me-time. When I open my eyes, a different river before me. Journeying geese rally against the tide, the whistle of duck wings, gusts of wind turn the water’s top so that new waves steal the sunlight’s jewels, spills and sinks them sparkling. Darker, slower, older. It takes me time to adjust and wander off home, changed, Heraclitus rolling his eyes. Dishwasher Revelation Damascus is reached in the apartment. Call me pathetic but I think that if I can fill the dishwasher, run it and empty it on one afternoon, it’s a victory. I’ve stolen back time from the consuming Domestic God, time I can use tomorrow not loading and emptying. I can use it to devise an amazing new poem, so good it gets a prize, or perhaps I will become Buddha and realize that every desire is a distraction from the truth. Buddha never worried about dishes, poetry submissions, the dishes, buying back time. Farewell In Farewell Bend park the wind has coated the grass with yellow aspen leaves, the first grief of early Fall, the grass a city awash with waves of pale immigrants as long as the ghostly coast, a billion doors slamming shut, to the sound of told-you-so and cracking ice. Crows caw me back, spiraling above the revealing trees. I flutter away, pretending everything will be alright. The trees will recover. Dark Sky Under a surprise-scattered June night sky my niece and I gather. Behind us, a necklace of lights ring the ranch where a friend’s 50th birthday party rumbles into karaoke and confident kids up late, smoke stalking itself in circles. Morgan surprises me with commentary about the wonder of stars in the darkness and forgotten distance of eastern Oregon. Capping out the light from the screen where 90’s song lyrics fire off, we look up and watch for shooting proof of wonder. Morgan sees the first one blast pass on a sudden long tail. We take turns to talk about the sky and that myth of spilt milk I have longed to tear over. There she finally is, faintly arching over us, a bridge between an adult and teenager. We try to get others to marvel with us, to use primate eyes to find the galactic center, the divinity of beholding, but they’re busy watching strained singing, clapping the same kid going back for one more song, his time to shine. Food Web A thumb size husk swings in a nook in the door frame. A cocoon, I thought. Looking closer, the empty husk of a baby lizard looks back, empty eye sockets, desiccated, a disgraceful illusion. Lurking behind, utterly still a palm-sized shudder in the shape of a spider. Freedom Madras, OR on Labour Day. A small crowd work hard waving blood-stitched flags and banners demanding freedom, a free Life, no masks, no tyranny, a different Governor, end to oppression. Behind them a vast bank of smoke makes Victorian London shudder and keeps truly free minds in doors, fans filtering doom. We pass through the protest, heads bowed, no eye-contact with Medusa’s many mouths. We drive towards the smoke that is coming for us all. For One Night Only Patient, my parents told me in the litany of life lessons pays off. They were right. For here they are, Vaux swifts, clotting the humming air above the ska-infused rock stage tasting the space above the Deschutes river tilting southward, sensing equinox and other tingling mysteries. The music plays on. The food of my life is a feast of dark bodies, snipping wings, clouds of bodies that disappear into individuals and reappear like a Vegas act. Published in Ginosko Literary Review #31, March 2024. The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset. Sylvia Plath Six months since we fled the long letting go of you, this November night ends with the Moon’s monthly act of music: spilling milky sighs over the lake, chorus lines of sliced light, whispered grief and humming fury. A cormorant treble clefs the molten page, then sloshes off on heavy bass clef wings. We wonder in vibrating waves how to fish for ourselves and not be lost in cacophony. Published in The Journal, #70, January 2024 In a trapezium of white light
cast on the wall by the open window and the April sun, a fly sits casting a shadow grander than itself. Its shadow leg strums with the music of being in the spring sun. Published in the Schuykill Valley Journal, January 2024. The Wind Chimes I hear wind chimes in Prague back home, the back door where Mum hangs wind chimes that tinkle in the breeze or when our rising heads knock the aluminum tubes, the music of coming and going, of belonging, being where I loved being in Prague I hear them and feel how far we have all moved. April Frogs April’s cruelty is calmed by the singing frogs. Every evening they begin I am reminded of my smile. Their bubbling boast of place somewhere by the lava rocks and the spewing houses that pour into the space between here and the river the stranded deer and deep croaking that continues as long as they can reach water. :Published in 'The Art of Listening', January 2024. When the first star appears
in the chalking evening night between the almost finished green silhouettes of two divine Douglas firs I know poetry. So does the dog huffing with the fever of fetch, an enthusiasm to make gods proud. Two bats swirl around dark statements of tree, bouncing between belief and myth. Hairs on my leg tingle with needling explorers with as much right to needing as the dog who noses the vastness of the grass trying to find his joy. Published in the Tipton Poetry Journal, Fall 2023. issuu.com/tiptonpoetryjournal/docs/tpj58 You could have lost me,
aged two or maybe three in that pan-flat Norfolk field fattening my chops on strawberries, mouth and chin bloodied, belly stained, fingers ripe with the first taste of freedom foraged from the basket, legs swollen from over- eating - crying mouth stuffed with so much food my fat feet bent inwards - shaded from an autumn sun by reddening under growth, a suburban Lost Boy, baby brother a thin somnambulant rumor that had to be awoken to be fed, I just ate and ate, coloring red from head to hand and heart. Published in New Contrast, 203, Vol. 51, 2023. https://www.newcontrast.net/
Published by Origami Poems in September 2023.
|
Poetry Biography:I have had over 70 poems published in the following worldwide magazines and literary journals: A Handful of Stones, Acta Victoriana (Canada), All the Sins (UK), The Amethyst Review (USA), Amsterdam Quarterly (NL) The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bolts of Silk, Borderless Journal, The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Bushfire Literature & Arts Review (US), Cadenza, Cake Magazine, Carillon, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), DASH (USA), Clackamas Literary Review (USA), Cooch Behar Anthology, Dawntreader, Dreamcatcher, The Dillydoun Review, Earth Love, The Ear (US), Eastlit (East Asia), Erbacce, Envoi, Finger Dance Festival, Ginosko, Gloom Cupboard, Hidden Channel, Inlandia Journal, IS&T (Ink, Sweat & Tears), Into the Void (Canada), The Journal, The Lakeview Journal (India), Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lunch Ticket (USA) The New Writer, One Hand Clapping, Orbis, Oregon English Journal (USA), The Passage Between, Prole, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sonic Boom (India), Third Wednesday (USA), Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), New Contrast (South Africa), One Hand Clapping, Opportunity Publishing, The Oregon English Journal (USA) Origami Poems Project (USA), The Paddock Review (USA), Panoplyzine (USA), Paper Swan Press, The Passage Between, The Peacock Journal (USA), Pens on Fire, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Potomac Review, (USA) Prole, Pulsar Poetry, Rear View Poetry, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Qutub Minar Review (India), Red Ink, Shiela-Na-Gig (USA), South Bank Poetry Magazine, Stand, Waterford Teachers Centre, (Ireland) We Are a Website New Literary Journal (Singapore), Weber - The Contemporary West Review (USA), Windfall (USA), Writing Magazine, Words for the Wild and Verbal Art (India). Archives
March 2024
|