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The Origins of the English Novel
Matthew Brogan
April 2003
Some mornings, waking early
in the business cycle, I breakfast
on serial metonymy and find you shipwrecked
on the posturepedic,
your body pooling up and emptying out,
your hair a metaphor
for a rainy day, and I know I’m ready
to abandon the gold
standard and the family pharmaceuticals
for a unit by the sea, the wind
rattling the windows to the rhythm of
prime numbers, the waves crashing
like waves only
then you lift your head
and the absentee ballots arrive
with tales of the epidermis:
the room begins to shake
off its dream— the walls
are white, the bedding blue—
and somewhere
beyond the deadbolt and swirling gases
a world grows cool and firm:
the changing of clothes begins.
Heavenly Accounting
Matthew Brogan
The people before us moved
with the grace of nomads, packing up
their small language and grinning
for the textbooks. The older I get
the more I think about my own mortality
rate, but you mustn’t blame yourself
for missing the rat-flea nexus;
it was a full bar, after all,
and the bride and groom were no strangers
to demographics. Certainly,
counting wheat is one alternative
to the lyric, but if I were you
and the President called to apologize,
I would explain that camp is a word,
like congress, with many meanings.
Of course, you can’t change the world
without legal-size paper, but try telling
the Karen from the Kareni.
The people before us moved.
This is their museum.
The sunlight is mostly indigenous.
The Bride 26, Is Keeping Her Name
Matthew Brogan
Lips, teeth, freckles, cheekbone— a landscape
invented by the ancient Persians (also:
tight leather pants and coins with the faces of kings,
but that’s neither here nor there).
It’s night and we are the round people
wheeling on Olympus; above the tree line,
the world knows nothing of anti-depressants. Until:
Zeus slips off his skis
and cuts the fish in half.
It wasn’t a sexual thing,
LIKE YOU SAID,
poor Callisthenes, hung by the neck
or locked in a cage and dragged
throughout the eastern empire (our sources disagree).
Making out came later,
after gunpowder and the cotton gin.
But who taught the hill tribes to breathe?
Who robbed the British of half their kisses?
The sea is full of dead lovers;
the condos are full of castaway hands.
Twenty-five centuries to turn your face.
Well then, I’ll leave the poorer…
No use: she’s gone and the sky’s gone
hard of hearing. Wet your lips;
the technicians are waiting.
Matthew Brogan’s poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Columbia, Denver Quarterly, International Poetry Review, Verse, and other journals. He is also the executive director of Seattle Arts & Lectures, a nonprofit literary organization
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Out now:
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Archives>>
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The Rail invites you to a reading with Jason
Flores-Williams and Brian Carreira, along with musical
guest Steve Strunsky of the Lonesome Prairie Dogs.
Thurs., Sept. 22, 8:30 p.m.
Vox Pop--Flatbush, Brooklyn
www.voxpop.net
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OFF THE RAIL FALL 2005 at the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library - Grand Army Plaza
(718) 230-2100 in the 2nd Floor Auditorium
Tuesday, Sept. 13 from 7 till 9
John Ashbery
Leslie Scalapino
Tuesday, Oct. 18 from 7 till 9
Kenneth Bernard
Lynda Schor
Tuesday, Nov. 15 from 7 till 9
Diane Williams
Christine Schutt
Curated and hosted by the Rail's Fiction Editor Donald Breckenridge
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The Independent Press Association-NY recently honored The Brooklyn Rail with the following awards:
1st place: Best article about Immigrant Issues or Racial Justice--Gabriel Thompson, "One Immigrant's Journey" (September 2004).
1st place: Best article about the Arts*--Amy Zimmer, "The Brownsville Rec. Center" (April 04)
2nd place: Best article about the Arts--Brian Carreira, "Harlem Arts: A Faux Renaissance" (Dec 03/Jan 04).
2nd place: Best editorial or commentary--T. Hamm, "The Issue is Free Speech" (Dec 03/Jan 04).
3rd Place: Best Investigative News Story--Marjory Garrison, "Minimum Matter of Survival" (May 04)
Honorable mention: Best Investigative News Story--Williams Cole, "Housing vs. the RNC" (June 04).
Honorable mention: Best Original Feature--Yvette Walton, "My Life in the NYPD" (Dec 03/Jan 04).
Come to the Brooklyn Waterfront Festival.
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