Drought

By Matt Thomas

Headlights bob in the road particulate
hunting day for night
same as I’m sitting beneath prop cloud cover
imagining rain that smells like black currant
while drought dampens sound and sharpens light,
curls the day like paper birch, agitates
a wasp criss crossing the empty mouth of a rain barrel
in a silent, electric expression of unfulfilled passion
like the standup piano sitting
in a small trailer in my neighbor’s driveway,
warping, sucking wind surrounded
by jagged odd lengths of PVC pipe, a broken wicker chair,
given up and waiting for early morning voices,
the clang and jolt of the hitch
to be rendered out of and away
from the geography of its purpose, jealous
of the coffee phlegm’d Spanish of the neighbors
loading the trailer
with the aftermath of a father’s unexpected death
resonating across the road to me in my artificial shade,
lilt and cough like longing for things to be ordered
once again according to what always was:
music in the barrel sounding an ever deepening note,
each endangered native thing
brought back into tune and place, a rediscovered middle,
the filigreed shadow of creeper in a sun
gentle enough to entertain

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Drunk and Disorderly

By Matt Thomas

Grimy as the plywood inside of a box car
Something in the squelch
Of those other stories
People small inside themselves
Riding along in the institutional smell
watching the bouncing ponytail jutting
from the back of a brown Snapback
tied in faded yellow elastic.
 
I’m guessing Iraq or Afghanistan,
that
 
familiarity is a relief just past the scratch
for both of us
our homes waiting, same
lights on, about the business of any separate space
while we occupy this one,
a Dodge Charger Pursuit
courtesy of, like everything since,
9/11
those microplastics sweating from everything,
 
air of recalcitrant critical knowledge
           bordering life and death,
suspicion
that anything benign is left of bang.
Which is why we're riding in a silent,
studious avoidance of conversation,
you driving as if clearing a house,
shirt bulging slightly above your duty belt.
A soft thing
like me deployed to boredom and fear,
a polyester heart
beating in the Kevlar,
 
engaging by not,
my sister,
the two of us safely within
the predictable outcomes
of Standard Operating Procedure.

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​Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer, engineer, and poet. His recent work can be read in Pinhole Poetry, Halfway Down the Stairs, Susurrus, and engine(idling lit. Disappearing by the Math, a full-length collection, was published by Silver Bow in 2024. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.