Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine, 2010) and the chapbooks Is It the King? (Effing) and Riverside (Longhouse).  His poems have appeared most recently in The Boston Review, 6x6, Big Bridge, and Esque.  New work is forthcoming in the journals Mandorla and Third Coast.  His translations from Spanish have appeared in Kadar Koli, Bombay Gin, Translation Review, and Harvard Review.  He serves as poetry editor at FENCE and helps the nonprofit WordSpace bring writers into Dallas for readings and talks.  Matuk lives in Dallas with the poet Susan Briante and their daughter Gianna.

Purchase Farid's book, This Isa Nice Neighborhood here, and check out more of his poems in the Boston Review's Poet's Sampler here.

 

 

 

The Good Object

Gunman, man-at-arms, my dream
is my dream of you
as my better hand, my best
governor, broker for me an Alamo
to take, an exit ramp I’ll come down
as a dune, a cactus and a thirsty city-finch
a windshield washer after my money
and one of these bright girls hopeful
as the pearl-handled Derringers of a pistolera
a bad, bad, mean-ol’ woman pistolera, shooting
up the dusty town, fulfilling the surrealists' dream–
art as a kind of man ambling the promenade
aiming at the neighbors.


Carols

I only care that you love my country–
coffee in the street, invitations into unknown homes
kisses on the copper penny bridge, the bridge–
take them. I only care that you love
she says to her American–
hammocks, hillocks, porcelain ducks floating down the river
testicles like oyster onions floating down the river.

There were no torturers, we sang carols, of comfort and joy, andirons
polished for the winter’s wood, godevils we would ride back home
I told her, breakneck, breakneck.
These explanations in Yugoslavia, Podgorica
over the river Ribnica, most fair.

The Good Object

My mother’s best jokes
are of old whores– my favorite
had worked the canals of Venice and so
though retired, out-swam an Olympian.  Hitler
said, “My eyes were like burning coal
and all was darkness around me” of the pain
his young, World War I soldierhood
suffered in the British gas.  Questionable
Bhumibol, the Thai King, our friend
explained his people’s wild love for him this way:
“You have only a gunmen
shot your president, died in the street
and your child will go to bed
with your dream.”  The joke’s
in how the facts are ordered
though sometimes I’m with Luther
who allowed it wasn’t only
our works and our will God hates
but us and the idea of us.