Dirtbags
Matt Broaddus
Every morning I open my door a dramatic reenactment greets me a ghost town in the west ghosts with six-shooters ghosts riding ghost horses sheriff horses doing paperwork while horse outlaws punch little old ladies in the mouth and are dealt with by nightly torch mobs over the hill behind the film production company lies a pit of all the extinct megalodons ever in existence buried in the sand I walk through thinking about each shark who choked on body parts for us to get to this comfortably violent lens flare tumbleweeds tumbling over the dusty past that is not that never was and never will be because I’m alive and dead at once and buy my shoes from the same purveyors of leather as you
Night Meditation / Meditation #3
On lunar eclipse night I go to the movies.
I think something is wrong with me.
Everyone else is taking off their clothes.
Mirrors break like a fifties melodrama.
On the other side, sound swims in blue pools.
Stars vibrate nakedly. I dive, I listen.
Birth, death, transformation:
The moon phases of creation.
Griffith Observatory is 2517 miles away.
The atmosphere wobbles like a celestial
jello I can eat to contentment
and still fit my ass in these jeans.
Afternoon Meditation / Meditation #5
I am disappearing
liquid in this bottle
brown as mulch sunlight
all around me white people
feel things about black bodies
broken on the field of play I am
disappearing rapidly
in this bottle listening to
people who don’t see me
eat the cheese
the mouse eats
the cat named Ragnar lives in a hut
women in short skirts walk by
the well of transformation
feeling sunny as the ostrich
who forgets he is a man I am
the dirt in this tea
from the root of the Andes I am
the little pool the little deer
the little cats drink from
Matt Broaddus is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and the author of a chapbook, Space Station (Letter [r] Press, 2018). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Foundry, The Offing, and Tagvverk. He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. He tweets @MattBroaddus.