It Isn’t Really Clear Who’s in Charge

Matt Hart

It isn’t really clear who’s in charge

          in my heart, but I bought the wrong

amplifier     I meant to get the commie trash one,

          but ended up with the upstate New York one, so

now the astro-turf rocks rabbits and footballs

                    hand-assembled     Thus, we’re all still

neurotic as fuck around here, taking trucks of pills

          and driving them through walls to not feel it

so much     And some guy in my email wants me to listen

          to a plant’s singing tongue in my mouth, which

isn’t what it sounds like     Nothing French about it

                    I just spent two years obliterating

French from my vocabulary, so au revoir

          poodles and bulldogs alike     I want my wife

not to worry like she does about how wildly

          we’ve all got our applejacks in a wad

She deserves a full-on molecular spring     But

                    seriously, dear, our daughter’s gonna be

totally okay     Our twelve year-old’s gonna be fine golden strings

          She’s an astronaut, even if she doesn’t know it yet

Sometimes the space race stinks like weed,

          and sometimes the weeds need to practice

their abjection     The vomit comes in waves

                    of pink     The vomit comes in drones

of ink             I think you hear me

          like a transistor question-and-answer session,

all those leaky caps and resistors, fluttering

          in the glow-in-the-dark moth rink of moons,

curlicues of milk fat and butter on paper

                    Effulgence and galactivity and

look into my woof     No need to freak in the angel

 

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