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Isla Mujeres

The shoal we saw from the boat was fish;

it parted as I dove through, and formed

again overhead, each fish

like a dancing molecule in a rock.

On the flight to Merida we came down

through clouds that looked like brains

or scrambled eggs, but they were only

wisps and down we came. I'd swim

by William Matthews

Foul Shots: A Clinic

for Paul Levitt Be perpendicular to the basket,

toes avid for the line.

Already this description

is perilously abstract: the ball

and basket are round, the nailhead

centered in the centerplank

of the foul-circle is round,

and though the rumpled body

by William Matthews

Old Records

Les shows me his new Braun

tape deck. "After I've played them

three or four times I can hear records

begin to grind down. Now I play

them once, to tape." He's got a wall

of them, uncirculated coins.

Things go by, the summer draining

into the fall; breweries consolidalte,

by William Matthews

Nabokov’s Blues

The wallful of quoted passages from his work,

with the requisite specimens pinned next

to their literary cameo appearances, was too good

a temptation to resist, and if the curator couldn’t,

why should we? The prose dipped and shimmered

and the “flies,” as I heard a buff call them, stood

at lurid attention on their pins. If you love to read

and look, you could be happy a month in that small

by William Matthews

Sunday Alone In A Fifth Floor Apartment, Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Globe at the door, a jaunt

to the square for the Sunday Times.

Later the path you made has healed,

anyone may use it. A good day

for a fire. Fast clouds tug

their moorings of rain, bent

like a wet field in the wind.

It's almost dusk when you look out,

by William Matthews

Minuscule Things

There’s a crack in this glass so fine we can’t see it,

and in the blue eye of the candleflame’s needle

there’s a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection

that could contain, like a microchip, an epic

treatise on beauty, except it’s in the eye of the beheld.

And at the base of our glass there’s nothing

so big as a tiny puddle, but an ooze, a viscous

patina like liquefied tarnish. It’s like a text

by William Matthews

Alcide "Slow Drag" Pavageau

Walking with Jesus the slow,

behind the beat. Mr. Resistance.

Mr. Ohm, Mr. Exactly Lame.

By some reluctance, some

restraint, if it be a restraint,

by some undertow and stutter,

the halt and lame can strut.

You can hear it yourself. Buy

by William Matthews

A Small Room In Aspen

Stains on the casements,

dustmotes, spiderless webs.

No chairs, and a man waking up,

or he's falling asleep

Many first novels begin

with the hero waking up,

which saves their authors

from writing well about sleep.

by William Matthews

The Blue Nap

I slept "like a stone," or like that vast

stone-shaped building, the planetarium.

No dreams I can remember:

the dark unbroken blue

on which the stars will take

their places, like bright sheep

grazing the sparse sky.

The night I share with others is cloudy

by William Matthews

Drizzle

Baudelaire: "The dead, the poor dead, have their bad hours."

But the dead have no watches, no grief and no hours.

At first not smoking took all my time: I did it

a little by little and hour by hour.

Per diem. Pro bono. Cui bono? Pro rata.

But the poor use English. Off and on. By the hour.

"I'm sorry but we'll have to stop now." There tick but

fifty minutes in the psychoanalytic hour.

by William Matthews

A Roadside Near Ithaca

Here we picked wild strawberries,

though in my memory we're neither here

nor missing. Or I'd scuff out

by myself at dusk, proud

to be lonely. Now everything's

in bloom along the road at once:

tansy mustard, sow thistle,

fescue, burdock, soapwort,

by William Matthews

The Party

I don't care if nobody

under forty can hang a door

properly. I'm six and I'm bored.

In the kitchen Lavada

is plucking a turkey

who looks crumpled

and turned inside out

He's full of holes.

by William Matthews