~
Elegy in Dirt
I.
As the white keys keel over, air
dampens, so comes musk.
There is a violence in creation:
the bishop whips angelus bells,
the furrow exalts the plow,
pen meets paper & suddenly
the dead writhe in sodden holes.
Twilight
outside your mother’s house
I jar the silence,
strum shadows out of streetlights.
Your brother has a child now,
the embalmer buys a ring or maybe
a daisy milks the furloughed sun,
beetles decorate an elk carcass
& an almost-nephew, dappled
in red ribbons like a tree, may sing
the beginning sprouts out nothing.
My garden dies every May.
How absurd, to resurrect & stab you
I who cower to car alarms
I who turned my back, mangle
urns, you who
ring doorbells & run into the sun;
Cohen wrote 80 verses for Hallelujah
& I am so tired
of seeing through your eyes
at night, grasping at straws of nothing
as light withdraws, melting towards
the roof of warmth, unaware the scalding
spoon will fall to the bedroom floor,
unaware mother will get that feeling
at work, unaware my father will punch
angels through the wall once the phone’s
unearthed — it took me years
to start revising poetry & now
I have many stupid ideas of heaven.
II.
When the chord of a poem is struck
the dead bite their tongues
& grow mirrors
coveting, they drill holes
in our heads with soporific heat, sprinkle
(flight of gore, lull of opiates)
& grope arbitrary sonograms, reminiscing.
Still, children dance
in schoolyard reverie; scratching
elbows, composing elegies in dirt
for their endless selves to come.
It is in this realm
I will assume all of myself,
& you, having corralled your wasted heads,
will arrive in the marcescent labyrinth,
neck chained to a bed of poppies,
Junkie Orpheus crossing the undulating
heavens of your mother’s throat.
With keys, I replant my crop,
infix messages in its wake.
~
Matthew Leger is an aspiring poet and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the winner of the 2020 Andrew Julius Gutow Academy of American Poets Prize. He’s edited and published in student literary journals including Hothouse and Unbound. When he’s not writing poetry, he’s likely to be found holed away in his bedroom recording music; his debut album, The Way We Were, is set to be released on Z Tapes April 16th.