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Two poems by Irène Mathieu

Irène Mathieu

image: de/em
image: de/em

isthmus

on our dates he’d take

a pack of cookies, a roast chicken, and me
down to the lakefront where stairs empty to saltwater,

hand me a wing or two, and lick the rest from
his knuckles, point a greasy finger down the coast.

a quarter mile away on Pontchartrain’s lip,
the isthmus, maw of foaming gulf.

moon up, moon down : tide in, tide out

Mexico yawning west, Cuba somewhere south.

if he’d ever taken me to that part of the lake
I’d have seen how the water pummels itself there

in a sweaty babble. the cookies we’d eat one
by one till the lake lapped up the yolk of sun.

I’d have learned sooner: myself with him – a box
of crumbs, how the moon pulls hunger up out a person

and crams it back down, the way water rolls
twice a day

in and out of this continent’s mouth.

artifacts of daily wanting

I wonder where I’ll be on that day.
it’s faith that scares me, same as unbelief:
who am I to be right?

I envy the way you cup a palm, say
drink   as if all this — reproduction, vast
decadence of breathing — were my birthright.

I don’t know tonight from any other.
an empty intersection’s wan face,
I’m calculating so hard.

whatever can scratch the sidewalk
into giving up a little honey.
does time really remember us each day?

yesterday a boy with a faltering circuit
brain asked me if it would hurt, while
his mother inflated a bathroom with sobs.

it could be said that I ask for too much.
I’d just like to know if those are fireworks
in the garden or gunshots —

I’d like a fable with the smoke.
some lavender mornings trick me into
looking for the day’s warm root.

I know I’ll follow you toward
soft tea lights, a bed we keep making up,
but a wren in her brick nest doesn’t ask

how eggs appeared under her belly.
one day these chicks’ yawning beaks
will crown the exploding forsythia beneath.

remember permutations and combinations?
math terrifyingly endless. think of
all the things we could make:

my brain maps the garden
and the spread before us whispers
in a sunset empire voice —

slick poisonous sibilance I don’t
dare blame on a snake, which
is just a miraculous tube of muscle.

I don’t know how to twist with such
singularity towards the peach dangling
between us. I believe I’m ripe.

yes, it hurts, that’s the moral of the story.
yellow is the color of my wanting.
I’ll say to you, here is honey — eat.

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Irène Mathieu

Irène Mathieu is a pediatrician, writer, and public health researcher. She is author of the book orogeny (Trembling Pillow Press, 2017), which won the Bob Kaufman Book Prize, and poetry chapbook the galaxy of origins (dancing girl press & studio, 2014). She also has received the Yemassee Journal Poetry Prize, Honorable Mention and Editor's Choice awards in the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry contest, and runner-up in the Cave Canem/Northwestern Book Prize. Irène has been a fellow of the Fulbright Program and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. A poetry book reviewer for Muzzle Magazine and an editor for the Journal of General Internal Medicine's humanities section, she is represented by Jack Jones Literary Arts.

Author: Irène Mathieu Tags: poetry Category: Poetry August 3, 2018

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Comments

  1. Sarah Stockton says

    August 17, 2018 at 7:24 pm

    “yesterday a boy with a faltering circuit
    brain asked me if it would hurt, while
    his mother inflated a bathroom with sobs.”

    Tremendous. These poems make me want to push further in my own writing. Thank you.

    Reply
  2. Sam Silva says

    August 5, 2018 at 6:53 pm

    I like both of these very much.

    Reply
  3. Fred LaMotte says

    August 5, 2018 at 2:53 pm

    Extraordinarily alive with sensuality and compassion. Thank you for these stunning poems. May be the best I’ve read in this journal.

    Reply

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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