Matthew Kelsey
Glens Fall//s
Is this how this country is going to answer you
and your immodest demands for a different world…?
-Elizabeth Bishop, “Arrival at Santos”
Here, our money makers shake
with smog
and pulp and flecks of god
knows what.
Finch & Pruyn and General Electric
bank on us
not worrying over our aunts
living next door
to plants, grids, mills. So we make do
with choking
flumes, aeriform script affixed to flames,
proliferative ash
of friends and cousins and mothers
done in. Just off
the horizon, a snap of diaphanous
gas makes stars
quiver with equity options. Riverine toxins
spell our town
to sleep. We call it success, this
cutting of trees we
burn to make bright starch to print
with ink. You’d think
we’d know the signs. Some of us are gone
for the wrong
reasons. Some are gone for good.
and your immodest demands for a different world…?
-Elizabeth Bishop, “Arrival at Santos”
Here, our money makers shake
with smog
and pulp and flecks of god
knows what.
Finch & Pruyn and General Electric
bank on us
not worrying over our aunts
living next door
to plants, grids, mills. So we make do
with choking
flumes, aeriform script affixed to flames,
proliferative ash
of friends and cousins and mothers
done in. Just off
the horizon, a snap of diaphanous
gas makes stars
quiver with equity options. Riverine toxins
spell our town
to sleep. We call it success, this
cutting of trees we
burn to make bright starch to print
with ink. You’d think
we’d know the signs. Some of us are gone
for the wrong
reasons. Some are gone for good.
Frost Heave
The stratiform sky today is gray
but bright, a silverfish
squirming in the drain. In the garden,
the rhododendron drops
petals before it even takes
to the soil. The baseboards fail
to keep the grower’s secret
from concrete and trash nearby.
Abbas Kiarostami said
we’re unable to see
what’s in front of us unless
it’s inside of a frame.
I snap a photo or two for friends,
but the red kings are cropped
wrong, cut from view. Not pictured:
the terrible soil, the dented tree
root I nicked with a spade,
my unborn daughter
fluttering as my wife
waters behind me. Not seen
are the marigolds I planted
along the east brick of our house
when I was a child, my finger
pressing the seeds into the soil,
my mother pressing my index
with hers. Not pictured
are the Snow Spring Crabapples
we kept in volatile soil,
their delicate white stars
descending mid-April,
preparing me to lose the people
who tended them, to lose touch
with the weather itself, still
patterned then like the predictable
neck of a mallard, the grooved
hoo of a long-eared owl
at night. Van Gogh said art
without a frame is a soul
without a body. If it is,
it’s also a body without a home,
or even the word home
without referent. No one
who sees this garden could know
how much I yearn for minutes
alone with my daughter,
watching her plunge a hand
into dirt, both of us small
under skies scored by finch
and starling, maple and birch.
She’ll guess at names
and titles, try to put a finger
on it all. It won’t be hard
to keep our childhoods separate.
but bright, a silverfish
squirming in the drain. In the garden,
the rhododendron drops
petals before it even takes
to the soil. The baseboards fail
to keep the grower’s secret
from concrete and trash nearby.
Abbas Kiarostami said
we’re unable to see
what’s in front of us unless
it’s inside of a frame.
I snap a photo or two for friends,
but the red kings are cropped
wrong, cut from view. Not pictured:
the terrible soil, the dented tree
root I nicked with a spade,
my unborn daughter
fluttering as my wife
waters behind me. Not seen
are the marigolds I planted
along the east brick of our house
when I was a child, my finger
pressing the seeds into the soil,
my mother pressing my index
with hers. Not pictured
are the Snow Spring Crabapples
we kept in volatile soil,
their delicate white stars
descending mid-April,
preparing me to lose the people
who tended them, to lose touch
with the weather itself, still
patterned then like the predictable
neck of a mallard, the grooved
hoo of a long-eared owl
at night. Van Gogh said art
without a frame is a soul
without a body. If it is,
it’s also a body without a home,
or even the word home
without referent. No one
who sees this garden could know
how much I yearn for minutes
alone with my daughter,
watching her plunge a hand
into dirt, both of us small
under skies scored by finch
and starling, maple and birch.
She’ll guess at names
and titles, try to put a finger
on it all. It won’t be hard
to keep our childhoods separate.
--
Matthew Kelsey's poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Southern Indiana Review, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a fellowship from Idyllwild Arts. In 2018, he co-authored a joke book for National Geographic Kids titled Just Joking: Sports. Originally from Glens Falls, NY, Matthew now lives in Chicago, where he teaches for the Kenyon Review Young Writers Program and Hive Center for the Book Arts.
Matthew Kelsey's poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Southern Indiana Review, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a fellowship from Idyllwild Arts. In 2018, he co-authored a joke book for National Geographic Kids titled Just Joking: Sports. Originally from Glens Falls, NY, Matthew now lives in Chicago, where he teaches for the Kenyon Review Young Writers Program and Hive Center for the Book Arts.