September 9: Poetry Reading, Matt Gavin Frank, "Communion"

I don't have much time for my second post this evening.  I'm heading out to a reading by poet Michael Madonick.  I'm not familiar with his work, but I feel like cutting loose a little bit tonight instead of holing up in my office, waiting for my daughter to be done with her dance lessons.

The poem I have chosen comes from Matt's collection Sagittarius Agitprop.  It's a quiet little poem that strikes at the heart like an angry hornet.

Saint Marty's been stung tonight.

Communion

by:  Matthew Gavin Frank

There is something of sleep
that is the hushing of a bird's feathers

being shuffled by other birds.
The day travels by train, bridging

both lobes, each errand shuffled
and repeated like a deck of cards.

The cards know the importance
of silence and repeated words:

Each king, each queen, lying back-
to-front with the jacks and numbers, lit

with indecency, must recall
the supermarket, the blue soap

on sale, the hole in the shoulder
of the postman's shirt.  There is something

of the mouth that calls to these,
in the uniform of sleep, as a bird

collecting a flock, an ant, who
when threatened with a fall,

discovers that it can spin a web
like a spider.

Hush of feathers