R boyz electric?
The animal stink of hormones
sucked into cells, the churn
of drop d chords. Differential
equations govern the slush
of punching and tears. I’m alone.
So no, more chemistry than Galvin’s
frog legs jumping from charged
posts to pole position. Whole
choruses lost to reverb and distortion.
I can think for myself. But still
something leaps. The friend I’d left
in the hallway. Less shock than
direction marshalled. Force applied
via the shove on a shoulder, a knee
pivot, pushing off (white lies)
mobilizes bodies, faces them
in the same direction, charged
with intention. The pit a series of nested
shells, bodies whizzing by, waiting
to leap to the next level. A candle shadow
on the wall near the bed. Against such,
what is resistance—a boy who sits
out, a girl even– electron, amber spark
vaults over gaps to find fellows
ready to move.
Debt as a Path Toward Immortality
This farmwife brooded over
a nest of past due bills just like any other
penitent, stamp-to-tongue communion
her prayer to St Christopher, patron of crossroads,
to hasten paper in motion, Deus Aeturnus. Debt
built basilicae in Rome, added miles to Hadrian’s Wall
through centuries, one stone on stone
raised up the high school where my nephew
pitches a pigskin paid for through local taxes.
After his fourth quarter Hail Mary, they chanted
his name like novenas. His glory days,
my sister’s sure of it. The mill, the levy
what we’ll all owe when the bill comes:
the market in bonds and bacon, both
self-perpetuating, spherical motion
unending. Even then my colleague’s voice, shared
unselfconscious with anyone who spent
the afternoon in the office, working off
what we owed the place. She dialed
for dollars, directing Siri to call alumnae
to donate in her memory, a bench to bring
pilgrims who’ll kneel to read her name. No one answers
her pleas for posterity. Her voicemail lives
in ones and zeroes, credits and debits only
she recalls.
YOUR NAME HERE
If asked nicely, would you relive your worst day
because some stranger thinks that because
it happened to you it’s different, and also,
you owe us, that crystal scene we’re already
screened, living as we do, at the bottom
of the sea, in the shadow of schools
pulverized by bombs, in waiting rooms
waiting through the commercials to hear
The worst. We’ve lived it more than
you, more times at least, trooping on high
holy days and days less holy to your stoop,
to fix the bleached bones of your story,
more citizen journalist than citizen. So please,
step right up, speak clearly. We know your story
but are so hungry to hear it from you.
Imagine it, the altar call that brings forward
the twisted, inside and out, the forces like hands—
debt, accident, drinking and just the mirror,
the real one above the bathroom sink and that
other mirror, the one that reflects who we meant to be
before those forces– those hands that pushed us,
who knock with spirit hands from some other place. Answer
that call, their knock on the blooded door or the clean,
the ring in the night that confirms what we whispered
about your life. Live through that and answer,
what it costs and how you’d pay.
Matt Dube teaches creative writing and American lit at a small mid-Missouri university. His poems have appeared in Scud, Slant, Interstice, and elsewhere.
bluesky: @matt.dube.social.bsky.com.
