Matthew Carey Salyer: Carrier

Let me get to you something of bone-white rain as it wicks,
pensioners lurking to Mass in their cross congress,
how black prams howl through gridlock at housepet scale.
Waiting outside Éamon’s school in all,
I prick on an ironwork fence fuming the lit fuse of its stillness,
hiding the day’s lost spool from myself. I fail
again to muster the rock doves in thought at ceasefire
though their droves convene the idiom
of our world’s small corner. Here
my observation ends as desire begins.
Of nature, I can only report something of our own,
its small tantrums, feedings, encaging, the thrum
& iridescent brushstroke on a dull bird’s throat.
Could say my mottled head.
Could say your red shoes.
Catholicschoolboys
fret as I once did like dappled stones
in their own fists. Scuffed wingtips. My ilk.
There is not a day goes by but I think of you.
This is my mouth to yrs, crop milk.

Matthew Carey Salyer is the author of Ravage & Snare​ and Lambkin​, as well as the forthcoming probation​. He works as an associate professor at West Point and a bouncer in The Bronx. His work has been published widely in the U.S., U.K., and Ireland.

Copyright 2024 Matthew Carey Salyer