Four Poems
Poetry by C.S. Mathews
Icarus Suicide
For Hiromi Yoshida
Icarus grasped the sun
as an orange
to be consumed as a
sopapilla stuffed full
of honey and raven wing
juice ran up to meet him
in a saccharin and he drank in the air
believing himself immortal
Winters Child
For Keith Snow
Pomegranate seed roots in
hidden caverns
life stolen from the light of day
to drown in the Styx
while mothers morn a winter
and men claim their prize...
Trophies rot on a shelf
after their novelty passes
and birds carry pomegranate seeds
to fresh soil
while drought seizes old roots
Granadas send shrapnel seeds
that spring into a forest of hollow corpses
Olives and Keffiyeh
my heart was delivered in a body bag to Palestine
inside, the memories of far too many dismembered babies.
They dropped it from 30,000 feet with a letter reading
"From the US with love, ‘til the end"
and so it was
Tremolo:
Noun/adj
The sensation of ribs splitting to flutter absently against a cymbal of lung and a diaphragm snare. Those wings bang themselves in double-time, ending in a crescendo of shoulders jiving in syncopated rumbles. Like your scapula remembered they too were once wings, and split from your spine in beautiful blood eagles, flapping in vain, until succumbing to death in the rain
Ex.
Vulture winged tremolo
Beat backed buzzards
Black adder strike back in
Syncopated slithering nicks
Jesus rose Lazarus after venom
Snuck in back alley arrogance
Coughing andcotton-mouthedd
He cried for death and
Jesus wept a rapture
Sending all scavengers to heaven
To remove all the crucified angels
And suck the marrow
from hallow bones
BIO: C.S. Mathews is the author of Phrenology (EMP, 2023) and 4 chapbooks including the collaborative Ekphrasis (OAC and Grind Stone Presses, Completed on a 1886 Chandler and Price printing press while in residency at OAC, 2023). She is an editor for the Grind Stone press, a staff writer for Black Noise Magazine, and the cover artist of 32 titles to date.
Having cut her teeth as a journalist and medic at protests throughout 2020, she has aided in organizing in response to the onslaught of anti-queer legislation, performing poetry in front of state capitals across the Midwest and South.