MATT HART

Cloud Versus Cloud

Vast vs. Void

The moment of Truthing.

People telling people through ski masks, Hello.

The anger of swans.

The sadder gallbladder.

The removal of everything harmful from water.

Dogs loving dogs.

A weightlessness question.

A question of patience and what will make good.

The goodness of a promise.

The translucence of a psalm.

Three sharks in a phone booth, two in a stall.

O infinite pieces.

A throat full of wishes.

Gods loving dogs.

The liver/gallbladder.

The removal of stones.

People telling people through a glacier.

The angry Beautician.

The goodness of swing sets.

Shark vs. Hearse vs. Grapefruit,

Hello.

Dear Floodlights

The challenge is Everward, fore and back

and side to side, to sea to shining—see? The blood-

metal grill tools and trees on their heads

on their sad-looking leaves, still greeny but ready

to turn up and falter to colors of gravity upon thee

and me. A blue or a redness in the eaves. It is true—

or is it true?—I would like to be an absent creator,

but my little girl reminds me of my role

responsibility. I take in her energy, light-speed—a head

the color of violets, of simplified piglets and knotting.

All my life is oink and moo, wingspan fluttering

prehistoric ROAR! And suddenly, I’m thinking

of you and a series of questions. O what means this,

and who? I answer the first one and become myself

a cartoon, a surrounded by starships, an out of my faith.

Tell me what a cricket thinks and I’ll tell you

to remain under cover. Who wants to know knows

better than ever the ambulance singing its wipeout ascension.

Emergency decongestant. A zone of drunk cars. Whoever

among you is a grapefruit in sections, let him be

a face mask into the meadow. You be a sand-trap, and I’ll be

incredulous, a wildebeest sucking its last on earth.

I can feel it pinned against me, a carnation very close.

I’m telling you dearly, as best I can amok. Cherries

and lemons and cherries, no luck. What happens here

attaches to the people I love over there, and so goes off

to consider its freedom, forgetful of my wired wording,

returning this warning to carry me home. Beachfront property

or anvil clanging loosely—what it all adds up to

is a rusted in the forest on a hillside, washer and dryer,

warm freezer full of meat. Or it’s like this:

along one road I often drive, a nation of deer

go missing in the moonlight from throwing their bodies

against me (and thee). It’s gossip has destroyed them

and too inattentive. I return to the view off my back-flip

aesthetic: half-inflated kiddie pool, squirrels running

recklessly, the face of a starlet. I wonder is it any wonder

how the best of us keep shifting, packed in like bristlings,

our thumbs to console us? To attend is to be present,

and to be present is to be accounted for in a controversy

speaking gibberish, when all we ever wanted was a microbe

to stand on, a little lamb to come baaah and go

singing its song. I feel I’m on the edging of a blanket

industry/apparatus, a series of possibilities

if you’ll only play along. I wish you whatever’s

behind conspiracy number three, pulled as it may be

to immaculate confection. You deserve it, so

crushing, and over the embankment,

then busting my piggy-bank head with your wolf.

Gather your winnings. Step away from the ocean.

Soon I will wake up and find you.