Matt Jasper published a series of poems in Grand Street decades ago and then started an odd restaurant called The Friendly Toast in New Hampshire. His band Pneumershonic is posted at WFMU. He writes on and in mental illness and autism. His 2009 book Moth Moon opens with a series of poems that arose after a year of homelessness and while he was working as weekend manager of a group home for elderly people with schizophrenia. Writers such as Franz Wright and Pagan Kennedy and Charles Simic have praised his work.
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| Matt Jasper |
FLIGHT
In the field, birds rising black against the sun.
You say they are ravens. They should be careful.
If one of them opens its wings too wide
all of the light in the world will be blotted out forever.
ANASTASIA, PURDY GROUP HOME
A man has entered the room.
He is a ladykiller. A real one:
growing smaller and larger and more wonderful and terrible.
His stomach opens, the room fills
with ladykillers.
They are eating you up with their eyes.
The nurse gives you twenty milligrams of Haldol.
Most of the ladykillers leave but there is one left.
You point to him and say, "I get carried away,"
meaning that he has come to steal you.
Anastasia, on this night
you pass out half a carton of cigarettes
and tell me that you will not live
to see another day.
At nine in the morning I try to wake you.
I say your name, I rock you back and forth.
You open one eye
and say, "what you touching my hip bone for,
you going to make soup?"
You are pleased to meet me.
May you ask who I am?
Am I your parent or savior?
a husband? Do I think
you will be a melt-as-you-go-wife?
Anastasia, you are beautiful:
rotten teeth, rosary beads, the dresses you wear when you sleep.
I will give you your Haldol, your Xanax
an hour late.
We will walk to the store for more cigarettes.
MOTH MOON
A man who has worn away his hair
against the pillow by shaking
his head
No.
The man who stands over him
whispering secrets of poisonous snow.
A woman who suffers from Dutch elm disease,
who speaks to her hands as they turn to dried leaves
falling
outside the window--
her hands covering the ground.
The porch light snaps on.
The man
who had wandered away now appears:
smoking his cigarette,
watching.
The insects gather. The moths
have finally found their moon.
Here on earth, wings burning.
Bodies falling slowly, like ashes
they had hoped they would rise from.
A TRANSLATION, PURDY GROUP HOME
Know that girl in the green sweater?
He ate her.
Had chicken in his mouth
then only a bone.
They say it’s lions’ heads he keeps in his refrigerator—
It’s people.
I die easily in here.
I need help for my hands.
Showers kill easily.
My head spins around at times.
I notice that I am about to stand
and through God (with hatred enough at times)
I am killed over and over again.
I am standing in the place and the place changes.
I am the changing of the place.
RORSCHACH TEST
I call this green ink blot
in the shape of a bear
“grass bear.”
*
This is an eagle
being blown apart by a bullet
or by the wind.
*
The antlers of a doe flying on a red sunset.
Her secret, right
here. It’s how she makes the babies.
*
Mice playing.
It means the cat is away.
Means tiny footprints:
feet of adultery upon the clean floor.
*
A dog rearing on its haunches.
He has eaten a gravy-soaked sponge.
He leaves no footprints and soon the other animals
can see only his black teeth.
*
The man on the window ledge.
*
The air is still here—
the air between the things in the room.
But the things themselves
have disappeared.
*
Like the river.
The water and a snake going up to the sky.
That’s bad luck—
a snake going up to the sky for a river.
TEACHING COOKING SKILLS, PURDY GROUP HOME
These are the ovens of the dead
who fall from each cabinet we open.
See them rising
as bread rises,
see them empty themselves
as an ingredient
or lie before us peacefully saying
This is my body which is broken for you,
this is my blood which you stir.
The food in our mouths was their food long ago.
They are filling us with deadness
so we can follow them to where they show us
their perfect kitchens that gleam without
the sorrow of these wings cut off and packaged
so we can roll them in the flour.
“A MENTAL AGE OF FOUR”
Hands, waving hands,
Hands running up and down your sleeves.
A thumb rubs softly against a finger.
The finger comes to life.
You watch it closely with your crossed eyes.
Soon the other fingers move—
The hand begins to wave like a bird with one wing.
You tell your hands to crawl or to fly
Yet by the time the message reaches them
You don’t remember that you ever sent it.
And so the hands themselves are alive
Caressing you now like a mother you have forgotten the name of.
MATHEMATICIAN
Dismembered figures taking form from the page they were calculated on. The unending geometry of his salvation. Body counts that rise as he holds the wrong belief. Or uses the product of a manufacturer who does not obey the Ten Commandments. Small open graves reflected in his spoon. Causing him to rise from his seat. Causing him to say,"May the slaughtered sheep of my kingdom come forth and be redeemed. May their redemption be measured in complimentary sets of silverware." For he wanders through the streets calling out his own name. For someone has subtracted him from a calculation he will never see. For he approaches a woman who viciously denies that her breasts are billowing zeppelins, that her eyes. They are so blue.
YELLOW LINE
David D. 33 of Manchester eats with his face in his plate and screams Manchester eats with his face in his plate and screams for his face in his
plate for no apparent reason. Police charged him with disorderly conduct for pounding nails into the yellow line on a busy city street. He is often arrested for misdemeanor crimes associated with his mental illness and problems with his face in his plate. At least two psychiatrists and a psychologist have examined David for no apparent reason often screams for his face in his plate pounds nails into himself and others is dangerous to the yellow line.
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