Matthew DeMarco & Faizan Syed

The Colonizer's Delusion

The meadow craves the sweet scent of skin where the morning
smolders, edging back as smoke carves the sun in two like an arrow.

I laid in wait for you. There was no need for weaponry. Only the hush
of snow protected you. But your vivid coat, the arch of your back speckled

with white, the gleam of your eye’s refracted light caressed my vision
as a pang of hunger stabbed my stomach. She, too, laid in wait:

Hard beads of sweat lined her forehead, drenched her blankets.
She asked me only for this, only to find you, whether on a meadow

grazing on the remnants of seeds scattered by unsoiled hands
or on a street frozen in awe & drunk on sweet heady light.

We scanned over every unctuous bubbling roiling your pots carefully.
Eagerly she devours - coarse fat, timid meat, gleaming gristle.
​

---

Metatherapy 

Somewhere in the ocean,
the water parts; a hole
spreads. And the tip
of a missile pushes
its way into the sky.

Somewhere in the gut
of the world, a bubble
pops; a shockwave
rattles core and crust.
And we tremble. We rock.

Somewhere behind
the ribs, a bubble
spreads; the blood
pops. And the face
of the father falls off.

Somewhere in the past
a boy turns off
the TV; the door
slams. His breath
reeks. And he punts
a body against the walls.

Somewhere in the needle
lies clots dislodged
by froth & bubbles. Pain
escapes. And a body
lies punted against the walls.

Somewhere in a rehab
a man takes off
his father’s face; eyes
unravel. A silence
settles. And a wall
lies still against punted bodies. 
​

---

​The Other Tongue 

This story starts with our girlhood
in summer. Mason jars and forests.
Bicycles and shotguns slung over
cartoon shoulders. Chewed straw,
sticky lips and sweat. Gibbous
moon hung; candle wax dried
over scales dyed in rainwater.
I watched her out the corner
stalk pitted streets before
she jumped the chainlink fence, skirt
flapping like moth wings. She found
me carving faces into wood, a weary fedora
framing wrinkled skin and gouged-
out eyeglasses, a pair of mouths
searching for eyes, a fish, a match-
box brimming with hooks.
My sense of humor was a bullet.
My apology was the same length
as my calico skirt. I could have held
her soft head with wool socks while
the fever flushed through her throat.
I should have shared her name, fused it
to my thighs, but where was the fun
in that? Better to foul our food.
Better to churn the butter of my body
into a creamy violet paste. Better
to make me crave loose vinegar, she said.
I watched an ocean of oil eat sparks
underneath the light of stars long dead
and engulf the silence the way candles
swallow darkness, islands of white flame
growing like newborn suns, my hands
& throat turning to smoke. A sweet
iguana’s tongue snuck between
the pebbles that lined our punch-drunk
makeshift road where it bled into
the beachhead. The soft glow of fireflies
crept into the night sky like dust
dancing in the last quiet light of a closing
crypt. I found her body anchored
by the tide. Reminiscences glittered: small
scraps of moon cleaving away the fog
as jagged metal corkscrewed through her tongue.

--
Matthew DeMarco lives in Chicago. His work has appeared on Poets.org and in Ghost City Review, Landfill, Sporklet, and elsewhere. Additional work is forthcoming from Glass and The Swamp. Poems that he wrote with Faizan Syed have appeared in Dogbird and They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing from Black Lawrence Press. He tweets sporadically from @M_DeMarco_Words. 
​
Faizan Syed, MD is a poet and psychiatrist based in Queens. He was awarded the Folger Adams Jr. Prize and the Graduating Poet’s Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Faizan's work has appeared in Montage Literary Arts Journal, MACE, Newtown Literary, & Empty Mirror, and is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Ave. One can find him on Instagram @drfaizansdreamery.