In Accelerated Silence
As the poet takes her own sweet hold of space-time, the Higgs field, electron clouds, fusion, and dark matter, she tethers the universe’s greatest mysteries to matters of the heart. A recipient of an Artist Trust Grant and a Centrum residency, Brooke Matson’s poems have recently been published in Potomac Review, Prairie Schooner, and TAYO.
BROADEN THE SUBJECT
In kindergarten the teacher
asked What kind of things are
red? and arms rocketed
toward the ceiling with
apples firetrucks roses.
I raised my hand and said,
Anything can be red, like a
sweater or a crayon, and Mrs.
Curley’s face fell and said,
No, things that are always red.
But my favorite apple is
yellow, I thought, the same
frustration as when my
friend tells me to broaden
my focus, to think about
moving on to another
metaphor, and maybe I am
a bull anchored to what
hurts, charging sentences at
what I cannot understand:
a cluster of small hands
firing into the air like
flags, symbols of how
the world ought to be.
I ought to let it go—maybe.
I return to red red red
because I cannot let it go
or turn my head the way
most people focus on the
Positive—flower not blood,
pomegranate not wound.
Maybe I am the narrow hot
line at the edge of the
visible spectrum, inching
toward invisible, bordering
on irrelevant. Understand:
anything can be red,
usually when someone or
something splits open
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
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