An Awful Way
“Have you ever imagined what it might feel like
to pee in perpetuity on the outie bellybutton
of the first or worst person to shatter the mirror
of your heart?” would be an awful way to start
a poem, when one should really begin (why not,
you know?) with septillions of daisies in parallel
universes Big-Banged from daisies, into daisies,
all daisies, and only then turn into the love-hate of
animals with oxygen, each breath rusting us
beasts to dust. Since even the entertainment
poetry provides means you’re a bit bored with you
(as I am with me!), any tonight might become
sincerely solo, a loneliness capable of comedy
and killing. Oh, isn’t nearly every pleasure—
from apples to oranges to the comparison of any
metaphoric fruit—the most wonderfully forsaken
action on Earth and a best bet of bad bets to help
tolerate our treks to a never- or forever-ending
whatever, surely any hereafter an impossible
darkness with the strangest reflected lights?
Matt Zambito
Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances. New poems are forthcoming in Swamp Pink, Tampa Review, Cottonwood, Slipstream, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has lived in Ohio, Idaho, Washington, and New York, where he now resides with his rescue dog, Sadie.
