Poem with a Little Chapel Inside, and: She Fell in Love and Broke It
- Poem with a Little Chapel Inside, and: She Fell in Love and Broke It
Poem with a Little Chapel Inside
I confess I've been looking for answers in the graffiti on passing train cars, the buckets of cable men, the asphalt shingles lost from last night's storm. I confess I've been lookingfor answers in storms and what's lost.
"I'm hungry," my daughter says. Her mantra,as she uncomfortably blossoms into six-year molars
and knowing which words are bad. When did hungerfall victim to fatigue, figuratively speaking?
When did the clouds become metaphors and notthe speckled seat of heaven we once planned
to climb to, and rest for a while, and look out?
A small white church sits beside a creek, across a wooden bridgeon the east wing of the Dollywood theme park. The pews creek. The pulpit is empty.
All that exists in the world are you and God, the grain of varnished oak, a childsinging "Amazing Grace" in the distance onstage to a crowd full of evangelicals and retirees [End Page 374]
and young girls who dream of being stars. I confess I dream of being a star—some supernova that bursts into a thousand feathers falling across the speed of sound like a music box.
I confess I sat alone there and was broken in two—not holy, but halved,like a peach split by two giant hands twisting it, the pit discarded, the fruit dripping. Tears and tears.
Read that how you like. Can we find salvation in a simulation? What hands would build such a tiny bridge?My eyes close, and I work to poke holes in the darkness, to let the night's light in all around me.
Snow falls, and outside the story plays through car windows:the backlit stained glass of churches on Main Street at dusk,
my daughter saying, "The clouds are following us."Some nights I wake in the middle of a dream,
alive as a light turned on. Some nights I forgetwho I am for a moment, some nights I feel I've died
and death is just the weight of some dark, blank ceiling.Slowly, through the whir of fan blades and shadows,
the stars find us breathing together on either endof some nightmare, some foolish dream, some prayer. [End Page 375]
She Fell in Love and Broke It
We spilled because we couldn'tcontain ourselves. So young,so past tense. Birds spill
seed from the feeder,and last week a young chickadeecrawled inside there, and, unable
to get free, died. My daughterand I saved one before, but wewere too late this time; time
was too long this time, timeas the difference in timebetween the clock in the living
room and the clockin the kitchen, the clockas my heart thumps that will end
one day and the clockthat tiny chickadee worearound her neck, and sang.
I will never do this again.Next week my daughter turns three,my wife and I grow older,
there is a numbers gamebut I can't make any senseof it: How many times? [End Page 376]
Once, Mother … the voicesays, from back when Mamawas the one to ask,
when she could glue the wingsof a sparrow back onand breathe life back
into a small thingwith a small breath, a smallstory she told us
at night, rubbingour small backs while we wereanxious and boys
and wingless and small.It was hard to movesometimes against the dark.
My daughterdoesn't understandwhy she cannot
fly. She flaps her armslike a naked sparrow, and I thinkthis is something
I should tell my mother,who, as a myth and cloudof memory and years,
is maybe holdinga broken bird right now,turning the clocks on the walls. [End Page 377]
clay matthews has published poetry in The American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, and Kenyon Review. His most recent book is Shore; his other books include Superfecta, Runoff, and Pretty, Rooster. He teaches at Tusculum...
