Disquieted

The women who love me

tread upon my sleep

and I am awakened

by their coming

one by one, visiting my living

room, arranging themselves

upon furniture, dropping their luggage

and backpacks meant for staying.

How It Happens

A part is not the whole,

but apart from it and merely

a part. The glass filament

is not glass though it reflects

light just the same.

When under a microscope,

the thin thread is a Great Lake shore

in winter when the waves want

for warmth and yet do not freeze,

reflecting the sun upon glassy surfaces

but not sun itself.

Truce

An exhaled pause that could

stretch into a week or even years,

a jittery finger on the trigger,

or uneasy as a flag, flapping a single wing,

the color of clouds painted upon a blue canvas. 

We might talk or we might

seethe.

It all depends

upon the lungs, its inhale

and what is expelled.

© Ami Mattison

For G-Man's Friday Flash 55

Photo courtesy of portobeseno

Autobiography of Deconstructed Me

Me, circa 1965

was

was is

was is born

was is born colored

was is born colored named white

was is born colored named white born adopted

was is born colored named white born adopted born girl

was is born colored named white born adopted born girl became am

War

War

War

War

War

War is the sword we love to live and die for.

War is the lord we pray to kill and fight for.

War is the why we don’t wanna know now.

War is the bind of proud vengeance, its bloody vow.

War.

Want me some war.

Gotta have me some war.

Come on, let’s war.

November's Child

I.

When you spilled out of me,

the trees were shedding reds and gold,

baring their heads before the gods.

They took you from my naked

arms, bending down as autumn limbs

towards dropped, round fruit.

Purple Dusk

She tended to her African violets, a jeweled 
setting of amethyst among emerald leaves.

Clay pots placed just so in the living room, one

in the kitchen window. When the sun brightened

in summer, she moved them to darker spaces,

pinched the dying petals, and they bloomed

with wild abandon as if sprung from the rich, black soil  

of the mother continent, still undiscovered by white hands.

How to Make a Trophy

Take a child. Call it

a girl. Show her the confines

of your expectations. Expect
the world from her.

Next, color her to perfection.

Paint her lips, dress her in pink.

Now, rend her body

to the fragments

of your desire.

Finally, pour her

into a golden mold.

Every once in awhile,

dust her off.

© Ami Mattison

For G-Man's Friday Flash 55

It Ain't Over

*My "narrative prose poem" for today's prompt morphed into flash fiction. Thanks to all the one-stoppers who indulge me and take the time to read!


Officially, it was the wiring. But really it was that black, bitter, backstage boil we call coffee, and I never would have spilled it on the frazzled light cord, its spliced rubber casing revealing live wires, if it weren't for Giselle who makes me nervous even when I look at her from the scaffolding above. When she dances, removes one shimmering cloth to reveal a dark thigh and then another to uncover her breasts overflowing from a robin’s egg blue bra adorned with sequins, I come undone, shaking and shimmering like one of her veils—the silvery orange one, flame-colored, heated as my face. And this time I spilled over like my coffee which first just sizzled on the wiring some and tricked out the spotlight, as it winked on and then off and then dimmed and finally dramatically cut just as Gisele cast off her last veil and the audience clapped an unknowing irony.

I clocked my days

I clocked my days with long

pulls from the bottle, each swallow

another second spent on bleary-eyed

yesterdays. I recounted sad,

sad stories, fondling them

as prayer beads, and mumbled lines

of poetry I’d never live

to write. I liked the drunken measure.

Reveled in despair because

the one art I could master

was anguish.

© Ami Mattison


Flickr photo courtesy of simpologist


For G-Man's Friday Flash 55

Dusk

The sun will not be with us

much longer. The earth turns

our faces towards the suspended

moon—its distance, proof

of how bound we are to molten core.

The sun stays and we move,

a planetary revolution, and yet

the sun seems to betray our longing

for light and warmth.

We believe ourselves abandoned.

Intersection

I.

What separates us are painted

lines, drawn across thick asphalt.

You, standing on a street corner,

your hunger held between both hands

and scrawled across cardboard.

Me, sitting in a car I can’t afford,

listening to NPR, waiting for

the traffic light to change.

Moving coordinates on the map,

we sometimes collide like this—

our paths intersecting along the roadway.

Eating Eden

Use your thumbnail to splice

the dimpled skin. Peel away

canary-colored pieces, the soft

white feathered bitterness beneath.

Bite the sour fruit.

Let the juices drip down your chin.

Smack your greedy lips. Spit

the seeds. Eat until it burns

the open cuts of your cuticles.

Feign innocence, and never

admit your forked desire

for blood and lust,

that first bite,

how you do not regret knowing now.

© Ami Mattison

Photo by Tess Kincaid

For Magpie 55