Matt Hart tonight at Word of Mouth, Athens

Matt Hart

"Twisted in bed there are eyes outside"
(Matt Hart)



Twisted in bed there are eyes outside. I need
        a diet. I need a blasting into the wallpaper,
   a fasting into the basement, storm sirens blaring
        for the whoosh overhead. O water buffalo, come

to quench my first/last light my heaven/my earth,
        my return to the baby in her do not disturb again,
   whatever am I thinking -- sleeping through the non-place
        places and the all too many mopey moments

I'm ashamed to remember, much less speak of
        my life pasted into the shadows where I'm weeping
   concentric. Meanwhile, outside/inside the waves
        pound against my front door. They have some

routine questions to throw up in my face the dog
        or the neighbor walking his stick saying there there
   you poor piece of sapling when daddy gets you home
        he'll break you in tutu. Being drinking,

none of this is my biggest problematic, rather a man
        on the table drowning/in cardiac arrest right in front
   of me. So me, and another man working with me,
        watch him through the night and into the next

next night. We give him swimming lessons to keep him
        alive. We show him the ropes/betting against him.
   Somehow he keeps pounding his chest against the skylight-
        alright, making his last best stand beneath

the sing-song whoosh/waves. Sometimes the touch out
        on a limb is too much irrevocable, so one begins
   aflutter and ends aghast in a corner, fanning the flames
        of an invisible forest. Cool black air and I'm in

the wrong house again. I wade through the water coming
        out of my mouth, put the key in the lock, and twist it
   to make it luck. Everything's just as I've forgotten it
        completely. I look in the mirror, and this is television. 



Tonight's Word of Mouth reading features Matt Hart from Cincinnati, along with an open-mic gathering of May Day poets and other literary provocateurs. The wordslinging begins at 8 pm at The Globe, but the springtime cocktail-slinging will undoubtedly be well underway. One reviewer has written that Hart's poetry "recalls the work of other bravely errant iterants: Teds Berrigan and Greenwald; Lyn Hejinian; and Swinburne (if he got lost in Cincinnati in the 00s)."

Matt Hart is the author of the poetry collections Who’s Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006) and Wolf Face (H_NGM_N BKS, 2010), as well as several chapbooks, including The Hours (Cinematheque Press, 2010) and Late Makeup Years and Decline (1979-1983) (Hell Yes! Press, 2010), which he wrote in collaboration with Dobby Gibson. A third full-length collection, Light-Headed, was published by BlazeVOX in spring 2011. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.