TWO POEMS by MATTHEW GILBERT
Self-Portrait as Magician’s Drowning
Waitresses in the dark deliver
handcuffs to escapists
as beer glasses amass.
The magician’s assistant—
blonde as a straightjacket,
that soldier smile—uncouples
under a bandsaw. The audience
claps politely when snow-ish doves
float motionless
from his breast pocket.
As the novelty wears off,
look at this life that’s been taken
for granted. Now
watch it disappear.
Separating Art From the Artist
Maybe you can help me
with this crossword:
Do you know
what snake venom
does to blood?
Other people
have penned worse
in the waiting
room magazines
of this landlocked
oncologist’s office
adorned with
paintings of boats,
scratched hard enough
half an actor’s face
is torn through to
reveal
the next page’s
Swarovski
bursting
through his cheek.
Waiting for my mother
I wonder how much
I could take,
sketch
a king cobra’s fangs
stuck into
a model’s arm.
And for how long.
Where the line is;
if it gets easier.
And how I’d do it.
Hanging, I mean,
or pills laid out
like bait.
I turn the page
to distract myself
and doodle a bottle
of poison, X
out a pop star’s eyes
to excise the thought.
No one has to grieve
the hypothetical,
the minivan-ad mom
drawn dropping
into a tank of sharks.
This issue reviews
the new biopic
of a fisherman who,
despite a rare disease
that curves
his spine like a C,
continues to haul
in snow crab nets
in dangerous conditions
to support his family.
His children
he seesaws to sleep,
one atop his head,
the other at his feet;
his wife
he horseshoes at night.
In the movie,
he drives
a younger version
of himself
to become
himself. Asked
how faithfully
Hollywood
recreated him,
someone scribbled
a bubble above
his weathered face,
writing, Why
does everything
need a happy ending?
The end
is always a relief.
Matthew Gilbert (they/them) lives in Connecticut, and measures the general success of life by the ratio of trees to people wherever they happen to be. Their work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, PANK, Sugar House Review, Identity Theory, Redivider, and elsewhere. Stalk them on Twitter / Instagram.