Three Poems by Matthew Sharos

THEY MENTION A HELICOPTER RIDE

 

&

        reincarnation
        but we plead
                                  We tell them we love him
                                   in this body
They wash it
dry it
                    take commemorative scans
                    explain clots as iridescent bulbs
   bursting
     slowly
                    I feel an exponential increase
                    Alternating current
                    Sockets stuffed with insulation
Aluminum
boxes
                   Cords plugged into my once     mouth
                                                    A beating dot
                                                            machine
                                                Black Black Black
This is not my father
                                 My father flirts
                                 & changes channels
He’s not a ghost
He’s discontinuing to atmosphere spiraling
                                                    into rain
                                         caught on my shoe
           a stain
           on my ankle

REINCARNATION HIGHWAY

Somewhere

           alphabet center
is a six-foot-three human
husk
                   He’s given
            fonts & sounds
                        animal
          & every word that begins with the letter
                                                              M
      I’m his ink
     & I’m not
     moving
                  There’s no surface
                     where my shape
                                belongs
                                  to me
          The soil
          of a tobacco field
    has a memory of each
    crop
                                 There is
               a migration of smoke
                                 thoughts
    exhaled back
    to the origin
every harvest holds





IN THE ABSENCE OF

My sisters invaded the bathroom

                   with a video camera
                   while I was pooping
                   They weren’t recording
                   Now I always lock the doors

I’m never sure what side to stand on
                   in sandwich shops

I didn’t hold her hand as we walked

                   In school

                   we always
                   talk-piss
                   Yesterday
                   I wasn’t
                   ready
                   & neither
                   was he
                   so we held
                   our cocks
                   with occasional beeps
                   from the automatic flush

                   This is how I feel about saying

                   Dad

Matthew Sharos is both a MFA Poetry student and a first-year writing teacher at Columbia College Chicago. His work has appeared in The Bakery, Columbia Poetry Review, Eratio, and Eunoia Review.