This week I have the pleasure of inviting Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig, poet, flash fiction writer, reviewer and essayist to drop in to reflect on a poem from her chapbook, kinscapes.

As John Glenday writes in his endorsement, my pamphlet kinscapes (Dreich, 2022): ‘investigates the issue of what it means to belong […] in other words, the true meaning of the simple, strange word: home.’

A crucial part of this investigation are moments of encounter. Moments that help the speaker of the poems to better understand not only themselves but also the places, people, as well as – in the ekphrastic pieces included – the works of art they meet.

Encountering Edina – Palingenesis’ the poem with which the collection opens, exemplifies such a moment, and shows it to comprise a mixture of recognition, comprehension, and change:

The idea for this text first emerged during a visit to Edinburgh…

Freedom

“Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field”
— Langston Hughes

America
Where are your devices
Were they lost
When the ships came in
The ships laden with 
Slave-wage servants.

Come in, you said
Come down off the plank
(You cannot swim)
Welcome to hell’s kitchen
There’s a place for you
On this killing ground.



Lass

“She 
Who searched for lovers 
In the night
Has gone the quiet way 
Into the still, 
Dark land of death 
Beyond the rim of day.”
—	Langston Hughes

The truly desperate
Have no boundaries
They cross every ocean
They unleash their ghosts
They have to be found
They break hearts
In chance encounters.

So, be gentle with them
First love will find them
Then seek to destroy them
In a thousand silent ways.

Harlem “Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who…

Meet New People They Said

Be social, don’t disassociate. Become known and know. Your feet move forward. Your mind a cloud, left behind. You carry the stench of a stranger. “You’re in the wrong place. Try over there.” “You don’t belong here. Hold while I transfer you”… on to someone else….not our problem...go away Smile full of candy teeth, delicate glass, hold steady. If they realize, candied powder, jagged glass…laughter and disdain Leave the past behind. Speak in present tense. “Hello. Can anyone hear me? Can anyone see me?” Your broken voice is a whisper in a stadium of screams Your voice is strange. Your face is dumb. Your mind is a balloon, helium up to the ceiling. “I have to get out of here…suffocating, I feel toxic, lost. Where’s the fucking door?” “WHERE’S THE FUCKING DOOR?” Bio: Ethan O’Nan is a trans man living in North Carolina, he has…

photo from pixabay

Illusion and death

He is a red flower in the white vase
On the window sill,
Seeing himself all the time;
Seeing his own petals crawling with bugs
And falling…
He is a red flower in a white vase
On the window sill,
Seeing himself all the time,
But not seeing himself clearly.
Sometimes there is rain,
And he believes his face is getting distorted,
Sometimes the sun devours his reflection
And he believes he’s going invisible…
He sees himself,
But not always clearly;
Sometimes there is a bug on the pane,
Or some kind of dirt.
Sometimes people look in,
Sometimes there is a crack,
Or a glittering scratch
From the leafless branch
That gently rubs
To show romance.
One day someone will shut the window drapes,
And he’ll believe himself dead
While he is still alive…


Head full of branches I have a head full…

Willy-Nilly

My body has a warning label 
details listed in hieroglyphics
as much as I want to be studied
I don’t really want to be deciphered 
I’m so bent and broken I’m perfect 
if you’re on the hunt 
and catch my scent
I’ll wait blindfolded by the firepit
come warm your hands 
together we will terrorize the night

This Skin

So bony
I break like branches
withered veins
buried so deep under my skin
in fear of a poke
they cocoon deep into muscle

I beg the moon to forgive me
I beg the sun to bathe me
lie so natural I form clouds
that float along
swab up my aftermath

I’ve yet to whistle
last whistle was 1996
last kiss on the mouth was around there
maybe that was when the world stopped
and my hell – is thinking
I’m still alive

Everything Counts in large amounts with coffee…