The Grass Age

I wore dishwashing gloves
for everything but washing dishes.

Shame was a string of ants
trialing behind me

like an unplugged power cord.
I made Etch-a-Sketch self-portraits

no one wanted to buy.
I wondered where everyone

got those airhorns
I kept hearing.

My daughter held real celebrity
at area nursing facilities.

Statistically speaking,
I was halfway dead.

The God of Loneliness

In a wood-paneled room, 
crowded with people 
wearing rubber masks of themselves, 
naked except for pantyhose,
I sit at a metal desk.
My prayer is the chirping 
of a fire alarm
whose battery is dying.
On an electric typewriter,
I start a poem with the line
There is no fish
stranger than the human heart,
meaning: I am the Object’s object.

Matt McBride’s work has recently appeared in Action, Spectacle, The Banyan Review, Conduit, The Cortland Review, Figure 1, Impossible Task, Guernica, The Rupture, Rust+Moth, and Zone 3 among others. He is the author of one full-length poetry collection, City of Incandescent Light, published by Black Lawrence Press in 2018, and four chapbooks. His most recent, Prerecorded Weather, co-written with Noah Falck, won the 2022 James Tate Prize and is available at SuVision Books. He can be found online at @matthewdmcbride (X), at_the_mercy_of_the_flies (Instagram), and www.mattmcbridepoetry.com.

About the illustrator: Gavin Kim is a dedicated artist currently attending a high school in Easthampton, Massachusetts. She is actively working on building her art portfolio and developing her skills in various mediums. In her free time, she indulges in her passion for ceramics, baking, and playing golf.