THREE POEMS

Pink Noise

Blueberry and thyme bubbling in a skillet.

Your beautiful nose running

around Barcelona. Watching lottery numbers

fall from the sky like Bolaño. This I imagine

is where you go when you’re not

pressing symbols into my hand,

buying a new pair of glasses

years later. A great evil emerges

from a cave, crawls across moonbeams.

You move to the coast. City fountains

delight the air, soak the night

in prisms. I buy

a swimsuit and a beach. Come in.

I will cook you a meal if you like.

I Will Drink Your Blood

Relic of dubious provenance! Hand it over!

I will drink your blood.

In vials. I drink

the clouds over Malta’s lagoons and drip

drip drip into deposit slips to become a citizen.

The bank and country club of Man part like

buttocks. The wind bunches in.

Aeolian drill to the subterranean

lands. Close your mouth. They watch

for gums here. For the statue in the square

toppling each day at its appointed hour. With panache

I nibble the bark of the bombax groves into signs

telling everyone to breathe. Serenity leaps out,

takes at least one of us each month. A tiger

whittling in caves, equipping herself

with spears. There I am a rock

carving myself against death.

And whosoever obscures

these runes will wander ossified.

The pluvial will not touch them.

Moundbreaking

The thirst is the sun over the fortress.

The thirst is the hand holding the magnifying glass.

The charred pieces of the Magna Carta.

I sweep it up, put it in a bathroom drawer

with lotions and ointments for when I cut myself

shaving. And thirst. Nothing is mystical

anymore. Excepting words. My face cries

because no one understands me.

I am not trying to communicate to their mind.

I am trying to communicate to their stomach.

I’m hungry. Hanging by one foot from

the DMV ticket counter in hell.

The thirst too is there.

The alkali lake where my feelings are

guarded by incombustible flamingos.

Could they teach the Magna Carta? No

matter how much lotion I apply

it stays crispy.

They cannot help me at the pharmacy.

They drink from the toilet and use power tools

on each other.

I’m unemployed.

Give me your stomachs!

Two by two. Linnaeus puts his mouth on

everything.

Carl, stop licking the Nok figurines.

Uppsala is cold but still there’s thirst.

I don’t take anything.

I put the Magna Carta, my face blood,

lotions and ointments

in the mounds. I wait.

The sun says no,

then will not stop saying yes.

—

Matt Broaddus is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and author of a chapbook, Space Station (Letter [r] Press, 2018). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Foundry, The Offing, and Small Po[r]tions. He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.