mattraw

Alexandra Mattraw

Two Poems

Casino Proposals

Upsweep sun stubble.  Pardon language that turns back on itself.  From inside, gamble red categories laid open.  Draw a ring around tabling. Tobacco heavy, the word notch a checkered truss assembly.  You don’t trust such enterprise, so you reverse letters and make capital good time.  Dinner fiddleheads gravy swallowed, whiskey spells a good spill and gets some.  Nickel dealers shine crescents into lull slots. Leather swivel ritual of one to two then wet sheets, nothing.  Pine sticky, how can any symbol manage itself? A trophy life, but the sky will branch bluer with no stars to barnacle. I responds to such circles but you weds her to heresy. Lemon rind thick between tongue and cherry nicked.  Test taste the role reversal en masse. Lit wishes born with one quarter and a half wick. A Desert Sounds You beckon my echo semicircle : Canyon slot rock walls redden all that becomes nearer. Each exposure a history : Sudden rain sketches veined patterns in the thick of it. Sand sprawl wind written only for sound.  Now a veil, a wet sieve grows downward unrelenting.  Pinion pines swell up to meet them.  Sage dampens frequencies forward. Creaks twist a juniper bone claw upturned to demand naming.  You argue but cacti bloom saffron one day a year. Call them pear, hedgehog, or fishhook as really a voice in your mouth.  Not their yellow cupped petals but the space around them. Is it your or our : Cottonwoods resemble wind funneled sea rush. Riverbed crickets brush foxtails, leg-spine stubble chirps in unknown glow. White t-shirts flag snap the hitching post dry.  Denuded, iron heavy skin sweats salt into air. Tree stumps anchor rocks, redden sound in what is closer : The rain abandons us, but really no one.