Clay D. Matthews
The Fear of Stillness
Three blocks down the street a man is taking a bath
in a rowboat, listening to Mozart’s Requiem.
He shaves his reflection on the water with a twin razor.
Outside the bathroom window Tommy
picks up his legs off the sidewalk,
puts them in the basket of Reno’s bike,
and they go searching the city
for a bell tower that works.
I’m reading Berryman aloud and listening
to crickets while my wife pops my toes,
hard enough I think she might know something
about pain after all.
This could be a montage if it weren’t
a poem. A hand rising, two thousand birds,
subway tunnels and eyes shaking
at their likeness in a knife-blade.
Somewhere near the end
I’d cross the frame in a tweed fedora,
jump on a bus like Hitchcock,
disappear into whatever comes next.
