Elegy at Low Volume
Father, worse than silence
is the fish tank bubbling
its insomnia, how every atom
of you hums unreachably,
as if through glass. Windows fog
with cloud-shaped heat:
your voice, a vapor. I dream
about the O your hand would make
around a scotch glass like a sigh.
Outside, a boy throws rocks
against a trash can lid,
and the sound arrives
exhausted, warped, less.
Only memories of you, Father,
with nowhere new to travel,
stay intact: thrumming
in my skeleton, tuning me
to your inaudible pitch.
Triolet of a Backyard Ghost
Nothing ages. The cicadas leave
their shells behind: preserved and hard-backed,
waiting to be filled. I must believe
that nothing ages, though I left,
though the birdbath won’t receive me,
and the mulch smells rabid. Though cracked
and aging, still, the gutters sing. If I can’t leave
the earth behind, I want my body back.
Matt Sumpter is an MFA candidate in Poetry at The Ohio State University, where he works as an Associate Poetry Editor for The Journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boulevard, 32 Poems, Harpur Palate, West Branch Wired, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere.
