Matthew Gilbert
​

Lucid

​I find you again under my bed,
my reflection nestled
with armless dolls and silverfish
 
crawling over the uneven floorboards.
Draped in a stained bedsheet
you whisper, What’s your favorite color?
 
Using our father’s mirror
you thought your face was grainy,
complexion crumbling, raised
 
on a diet of dust—Shh,
I hear his static. Sorry, you say,
bobby pins were in my mouth. Then,
 
What’s your favorite color?
I’m awake but can’t move.
Dad rolls marbles across the floor
 
to show he knows our hiding spot.
If this was a dream, you say, light
leaking down your face, it would
 
have a classic interpretation. The light
brightens. Tell me,
you slur, face flooding, what is it?
 
But white
is not a color, white is its absence,
and his nose is so full of blood.

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Shepherd
 
A boy whose career placement test says Window Washer
                        asks the Cellist to pass a note
 
to a girl who has gotten Lumberjack
                            three times. Rare separately,
 
our class has a sister and brother
            Trauma Surgeon and Cult Leader--wait,  
                           what? Who got named
 
                           Systems Targeting Lead [STL]?  No way,
              that’s lower probability 
            than NFL Quarterback!
 
Our Algebra Teacher snaps, stops us
by blurting out that they never identified
the Serial Killer who almost murdered her.
 
                        He approached her in the library
                                    to compliment her posture.
 
On the roof of the high school, he taught her
the wrong names     of all the stars.    
 
  It was on the news and everything,
footage of an evidence bag with his phonebook
marked by wax drippings.
 
                                                         She shivers.
The worst thing you can do is believe you’re special.
 
She was friends with two Dancers
            whose severed feet were found
    in the Waxahachie like ice cubes
in white wine.
 
            To this day she kicks the blue plastic bin
for the Garbage Man down her driveway,
wine bottles clinking, before the sun sets.
 
                                       The Shepherd, daydreaming
                            out the window,
 
missed the story while watching a bird.
                                    We missed the bird.

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Matthew Gilbert’s work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, PANK, Sugar House Review, Redivider, and elsewhere. They live in Connecticut, and measure the general success of life by the ratio of trees to people wherever they happen to be.