I. In Defiance, RE: The Brazen Fuckery of These Darkloom Days
(DEAR WHOMEVER,
tired of mirrors slithering
tired of pasting faces
tired of every pitted
pensive pendulum
above all tired of being tired
fed up from feeding
all these fanciful metaphors of what it means to be
a shadow electrified inside a stock body
this surly bond of knots, snagged or snarling
stumbling through the dark loom of whatever
the long lean nights even mean anymore
I mean what the fuck
Jesus?
what the fuck
Clocks?
what the fuck
Language?
Mother Tongue of Light:
sawdust, teeth, tonsil-
what words for hope don’t dust away
zephyred, windblown about in a wreckage?
this finds you
I hope
Well?)
II. Prayer Prayed by Skin of One’s Teeth
(DEAR LORD OF THIS GODDAMN EARTH! Forgive us all the diamonds we buried in our backyard yesterday in the vain hope that tomorrow might dig them up & call them pretty. Soft, trembling edgeless things but sharp enough still to lop the head off a scarecrow. Send word that the birds have abandoned us for brighter fields to haunt—[mumbling unintelligibly for quite some lines longer. Ad infinitum Et Cetera, but no more hallelujahs left to sing . . . . . . ])
III. The Snow That Once Was Made of Glass It Is Falling Now
(DEAR WHATEVER made you feel so small was wrong & all the things that could not possibly be poems now are So: There.)
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Matthew Burnside is a writer.
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image: Rob Kaniuk
Rejection Letters 