Matthew DeMarco

Earth and Smoke as Glass

i. 
why the sad length? 
                         before bricks 
adobe smoldered  
into mold 

             sturdy like a home 

basement foundation  
tear stone blocks out from under your skull
ii. 
Our little brown bird was a
smoke. True, she wasn’t ours. 
She rose up on our pillow 
when her wife appeared, 
bright and charming earth framed in
the sparkly glass. The wife’s beak
tore and pecked through wire mesh,
her eyes sharp and darty. 
The little grackle hurried to her
wife. They went then, smoke and
earth. Grackie smiled brightly. 
Her round-rimmed glasses 
glinting in the pinkly lit night. 
iii. 
years click by 
the strobe effect 
​
our stadium flicks 
            its heels 
​
the grass grain 
lights mallow 
in bloom 
bulging marrow 
fig dance & 
leaves, delicate rings
clang out their best material for a hospital bed with a view 
cultivate closeness 
grow  
like a germ 
the glass jar 
resting in repose

​

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Matthew DeMarco lives in Denver. His work has appeared on Poets.org and in Ghost City Review, Landfill, Sporklet, Glass, and elsewhere. Poems that he wrote with Faizan Syed have appeared in Jet Fuel Review, Dogbird, and They Said, an anthology of collaborative writing from Black Lawrence Press. He tweets sporadically from @M_DeMarco_Words.