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.

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