Proud
Saltimbanque
Life
St. Andrews
Beat
Proud of my broken mouth
I lay on my back and fired
arrows at the sky. If one
finds its target, one finds I.
riding on the train
I watch a given leaf
be moved a given distance
I am more than a train
more than a leaf
more than a given
—bad foreign movie
conceived by dullards
written by imbeciles
produced by perverts
cast by criminals
designed by cretins
lit by crackpots
shot by halfwits
acted by miscreants
directed by fools
captioned by fiends
edited by mongrels
colorized by maniacs
soundtracked by lunatics
distributed by savages
projected by idiots
reviewed by madmen
over too soon.
A man does not confide,
harvest insult or take hurt.
The colorful shoes on his
punch feet walk the grass
into piss and silence
beneath his iron.
He exhibits, perhaps,
a moleular shrug, thinks:
I will find the hole’s dream
of completion, insert my hand
with grace and retribution.
Stir until it whines.
I remember my older
brother near tears at the
bottom of the mud-icy
hill asking for
help with his boot
and how I, standing
straight and tall,
imperious and
impervious to all,
informed him he would
have to do it himself,
would have to be strong,
never ask for help, never
let them hear you cry—
that he would have to become
as cold, hard and unfeeling as I
at the age of eight. I knew
I had them beat.
Matt Dennison is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for Better, from Main Street Rag Press. His work has appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review, among others. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven and Jutta Pryor.
