Issue #135 from Theta

from Theta

Matt Longabucco

Issue #135
April 2023

Θ

precursors a book I liked that I don’t like anymore

no writing, and no writing on the horizon

silent dinner silent dinner on vacation

I see someone I used to love but now
we don’t love each other see a friend but
we don’t have fun say I like a movie even though
I don’t, or see a friend and we only talk about movies and tv,
after what it took to leave all that behind

try an aging app and what emerges is the old man’s sagging eyelids,
his weary lip, he also lost friends as years went on, and however angry
or resolved we are when they depart, there’s always that child inside
who whispers oh no, they’re really going

friend with an ego ideal so fragile that to be thought of poorly,
by anyone, was like a death

at the house-turned-museum, when I said won’t it be nice to have
our letters in a place like this one day, Rachel gave me a look, it’s true
we know too many writers, how can any of them stand out enough,
how about a museum devoted not to a genius
but to everyone’s flashes of genius

something holy about the fact that we can follow passion to a terminus
that shakes our body, knowing it could shake the great body as well

that world seems far away

all the moods a promise has to move through, to stay intact

rejected after having declared absolutely everything

some things, once said, can never be taken back, and by heeding
these emanations the undead navigate an expanse of featureless terrain
to slake themselves on pity at its spring

even belaboring this list the insipid approach of endings

my friend and I talking about a moment from a past no longer possessing
any reality whatsoever, so obscure it couldn’t even be staged,
unless there were such a thing as the opposite of a play

the people who think I’m cheap love all this inflation


Θ

problem
that to keep the good moral feeling
you must become for a time the moral itself,
bank of servers backing up infinity,
piece of information that can no longer
be diverted from the wrong ear

stay a few extra days, next week is slow
and you’re soaked

we see the woman cutting flowers
and know Mr Keats has died

I’d be okay being near people, if these
really are people, despite the enthusiastic
rhythms of their speech

nose starts bleeding and my weirdness
is all over my hands

don’t just remember me,
that only works for nine years

Subject
Poetry
Return to Issue #135

Matt Longabucco is the author of the poetry collection Heroic Dose and the book-length study M/W: An Essay on Jean Eustache’s La maman et la putain. The latter is about a landmark of French cinema and its creator.

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