Inside It
I pull Lucy’s book and read about when I met her
On the passive lawn on her quick dry towel
I wanted to see if I really laughed then and I did laugh
I took my time reading My Life because I wanted to remember every sentence
But walking from the train to work, all I could think about were the words “brackish water”
Then the fifth graders and I read about different types of water and there it was
I made up a word bingo to fill the minutes we had left
I called loudly for each kind, each body of it
One boy punched his desk, turned to face the window
I know I don’t know how to lose, he said, I know it
I am just like this
Everyone seemed to know about the special moon
Everyone was familiar with the Mind Palace except for me
I thought about the novel Moon Palace which I had also never read
But remembered the cover on top of Julia’s dresser
I began to panic
I focused on my favorite poem the one that goes
For we want to enter the house if there is a house
Recalling my teacher who said nothing was obvious
And nothing was to me except that line
There was no doubt in my mind that we wanted to enter the house
That there was a house, and that the desire to enter it wasn’t mine alone
This kind of knowledge could carry me
On the metal train, on my silver bike, on my feet
So when Anya put me in her poem, read it aloud, called me t-shirted
I started sweating
I felt so strong
Glacier
Anthony wants to know what a flashback is
You could return to a differently colored room, to first grade
Animal cracker crushed on the linoleum
Animal cracker shaped like a giraffe
It used to bother me in movies when characters owned portraits of themselves
When they kept stills from previous scenes inside a locket
like there’d been someone else there taking the photos
It should be impossible to look back that way but it isn’t
It’s possible to see me mistake my father for his twin
while the recess receded behind him
I could see me see the mistake
I was crying in the harsh light
then I was crying in my life,
trimming images of landscapes on the paper guillotine
When people describe things as dream-like, I’m out
In my dream the fourth graders ask me to go to the bathroom,
they don’t come back
I set out looking for them afraid someone will say
I shouldn’t have let them all go at once
Nobody says anything and I wake up,
vibrating on the train past blurring lilacs
on my way to tell you about the oldest volcano
which glacier is expanding
which ones are returning to water
It’s true I know some things by now
The answer to a riddle is often a clock
On Land
Am I the moose who loved his juice?
Who drank it with care but spilled it everywhere?
Is my heart the bitter buffalo?
Alone I faced the axolotl still breathing in the filthy tank
Someone had walked by and decided it wanted more food
Ignoring the children who had learned to care for it
Who told me when I arrived, we said one wafer every two days
On my break I filled mason jars with the brown water
Rinsed the greasy filter under the running tap
While my students came up with a code to calm themselves
Three, two, one, cheetah
The bearded dragon grips my shoulder, turns to face the sound
It can’t experience complex feelings like love
But it can recognize you and remember you, like love
Can you tell me which animals built their own villages and towns?
Which ones made it to the city?
When you look back you can see how you got to the room you’re in
To the chair you are sitting on
The lemurs sailed in floating carpets of vegetation towards a quiet place
The turtles played a crucial role in medieval robberies
The first ones through the door, scouts before the thieves
A turtle with a lit candle on its shell, as big as a little finger, walks into your house
Are you afraid?
The thieves overhear your reaction and retreat, plan for another time
Three, two, one, cheetah
The children trust me and follow my voice, but whose voice am I following behind?
The song about prepositions is the most beautiful one
It tells us where everything is
The mouse in the house, the cat in the hat, the fish in the dish
The bear on the chair, the snake on the cake
Things work differently in other places, remember that
Another set of animals and actions in Australia
The kangaroos hop, the echidnas shuffle, the butterflies dance
Before they danced, they drank the nectar of the day and were called moths
Before that, something else
Fran Matos
Fran is a poet and teacher. Her work has appeared in Pencil Magazine, Soft Union, and Shabby Dollhouse, among others.