Farid Matuk


An American in Dallas

I wanted to get embarrassed
             so much
                        (a thread to pregnant in Spanish)

I lower my head to bury it
             in the green creek
waters, slow vapors
             burrow and fill my nose
the death and change
             of everything
berries of some tree
a small flat fish
             makes a silver line
of its belly, old forms
             now a salt
sharp
             but with so many tones
seeps into my lip
and gums

Good morning

             By the road
there is deer corn
             outdrive
a big sky storm
for a quart of coffee
             McDonald’s crotch
             coffee says Scott

The old songs
             calibrate me
to the dirt
Beefmaster Gamesmen
             (processor) sign
spindle-flower farm
             machines spit out
or cut in rounds

We ride in a beautiful TV car
of Deborah’s family’s money what I write
is what I make

attend through
an awareness of the
son of capital
the betrayed
             the blues
this is the mild
donkey to make conversation
with the golden ass–

                                     awh fuck,
             my disgraceful
                        pursuit of a thought–

a heat comes off
the cement walk
of the restaurant holding in it
the powders and creams
of some girls who’ve gone by
a trace of their self-regarding
and tending to their bodies that
will die

a billboard for cadavers (donated) peeled
and posed at the natural history museum –

where should my perception sit
to be marked present?

             The clouds in their strata

the early moon from its perch
             says c’mon
show me your playlist
I just now told Scott
there’s no color like road
             flares and there goes the sun
toward Arizona
             a red crane
a silo
             wait for their next operation

Just get up and go
             an open blindness
of the Midwest to be learned

at home the dog’s long tendons –
                                     available

and my toenail clippings pile on Susan’s coffee table
and the ends of my toes whisper
naked things into the air of the room

Amen – I’m gay, I’m queer, I’m straight
and black, and rich, and poor, and white

This is it
             World
why you love and die
and haul
the company’s catch of fish

write back and tell me
             what you
get out of it

I feel so many impossible things
between here and Waco
             cuz of that surging orchestration

still most mornings I wake up afraid
even with Eileen’s poems
that can turn me on to everything
somewhere in the house

                        This is my year as a racist

I love Susan’s little hands so much
they don’t even look human sometimes

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