More on: Poetry

John Matthias explores the outer limits of the sonnet form.

There’s always
the possibility of never coming back

Push on it again,
that point of light.
What do you think
light is?

Faith’s a dissonance, a forgetfulness.

of God yes by the but
not there but for the

act of yes acts of but
not a given state of

You flinched a moment ago when you thought
you heard unseasonable thunder.
Like a judgment.

On her last visit to the hospice, my niece
watched a flock of red-winged blackbirds
settle in the tree outside the window,
as if waiting for my mother to join them.
My brother, the pastor, calls this a God wink.

My wife
Is reading D.H. Lawrence and says she wants to get a tattoo. She says that I’m not “deep,”
And maybe she’s right.

From the night woods, wild things come to possess
The fields they’ve lost to human violence
And savvy, as the dark itself returns to bless
The troubled mind with sleep.