m a t t    m c b r i d e

Solstice

Midnight in the Museum of Frailty

Stone

Solstice

Heat brought gnats. Sunday blowjobs and the children held more than bluebirds in their chests. Barking gulls pulled Styrofoam cups from the river. I made clay pigeons. Toy piano wind chimes but no one sat on porches. Sometimes it’s alright to feel inhuman. Two lawn mowers were stolen and the theft ascribed to "gypsies." A McDonald’s was razed and a new one built over it. A well-intended octogenarian handed out prayer cards. I looked for a light that would open the clockwork of her face.

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Midnight in the Museum of Frailty

Here your heartbeat
is merely the echo of an echo.
A whispering projector
dimly plays an amnesiac’s dreams.
Sepia photos of strangers are everywhere.
In a corner, the black eyes of does
are preserved in an aquarium.
In the center, a glass bell
filled with humming birds
burning, stuttering
like the words
you can’t recall.

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Stone

What of the clouds?
If not stone
then certainly ice

and behind them
the forgotten astronauts
skeletons now

floating in a star-ridden silt.
A pigeon folds its wings,
falls from the telephone wire.

What holds us
is what we hold.
Bodies are placed underground

as we carve stones.
Organs are too soft, so much water
where there should be silence.

Some eggs are filled with sand—
some wait best
by serving.

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MATT MCBRIDE is a graduate of Bowling Green State University’s MFA program. His chapbook, The Space between Stars, is available on Kent State University Press. He lives and works in Bowling Green, writing in the small margins his life allows.