Poetry by Morgan Matchuny

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Broodmare

I cocoon myself in winter—vicious.
The sunless sky, a rhetorician,
salts the earth with specks of light 
dotted over achromic fields,
spouting hollow promises. Call it pasture
the way we drag our feet,
search for high heaven,
stuff ourselves with chaff.

He created
not a life
but a fending off—  
a mouthful of bitter seed
dressed as beauty.
A body trained to hunger
like soil that opens only to take,
then cracks, empty and obedient.

The god who touches me
loses his hands.





Inpatient (Variations)

The building rattles,
startled as an alarm clock.
Lights click on, forget why. 

I arrive with a map
folded into two.
Ink still drying.

Hallways reset themselves.
Each day a new pain
personified in property.

The patients burn small and steady.
Match-head bright.
I cup my hands.
The heat transfers.

Everything is scaled wrong.
Tiny chairs.
Plastic windows sealed shut.
A house arranged for looking,
not living.

A hand outside
keeps shifting the furniture.
Walls blame the body
for pressing back.
People blame the bodies
that only know how to push.

By the last hour
my name fits loosely.
My breath inventories itself.
Drawers hold what I forget.

I fold the map again.
Smaller.
Smaller.

A hope persists.
No revelation.
No neon light flashing.
Just enough
to notice
what the house is made of.




​Morgan Matchuny is a writer, visual artist, and poetry editor for Tiger Leaping Review. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky. She is the inaugural featured poet in the Rawhead Journal: Point Blank series. You can find more of her work in HAD, God's Cruel Joke, and elsewhere.



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