Matt Broaddus is a Cave Canem fellow whose poems have recently appeared in Small Po[r]tions, NightBlock, The Offing, and The Baltimore Review. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and tweets sporadically @mattbroaddus.
Where I live
What is behind
a blue door
concerns me.
America
dish washing,
moose heads,
the ornamental
surveyor’s tools.
What concerns me
is behind a blue door.
Specifically,
the literal line.
I’m standing in
the imperium’s yard
while it smokes
cigars in the solarium,
whatever that is.
What behind
blue concern
is a me door.
I have been practicing
my astral projections,
time travel, flight.
I wondered if
we could be friends,
but I’m afraid to ask.
What me is
behind a blue
concern door?
I could be
anything
you aren’t
which is scary enough
to build subdivisions.
What blues me is
concern behind a door.
If I knock
will you burn
down the house?
Will I burn
down the house?
Where is this house
we speak of?
What concern
is me behind
a blue door?
I am not
an electrician,
but on blackout nights
I can jigger the fuse box,
pull levers until
there’s a sky.
Cat Burglars
Lost in the woods,
I answer to no name.
I call out stone to separate it from the orchid.
By naming, I name the illusion.
If I wait patiently
the Large Magellanic Cloud will
drift through space to dock with the port of myself.
Desperate for sapphires,
I swim in emeralds.
Tautological is a word
I can never remember the meaning of
but it’s apt when considering:
Who are you and who am I?
The realization like fireworks
escaping from a vault.