From the Archive: Matt Rader (CAROUSEL 34)

Staff/ November 26, 2020/ Poem

MATT RADER

Lunar New Year’s Day,
Year of the Snake

– for Eduardo C. Corral

The cross steepling St. George’s is so empty.
Meanwhile, vultures cyclone
Their shadows motherfucking slowly.
Meanwhile, five bison
Skulls on the barn wall sport one
Or two small black annuities
Terminating where their brains
Would be.
Meanwhile, fingerprints, Charybdis, drains. Again,
All good fortune is wealth,
All ill fortune the ouroboros of luck feeding
Itself itself.
St. George’s is so lonely evenings
After the Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

Matt Rader is the author of three collections of poetry, Miraculous Hours (Nightwoof Editions, 2005), Living Things (Nightwood Editions, 2008), and A Doctor Pedalled Her Bicycle Over the River Arno (House of Anansi Press, 2011). He is also the author of the story collection What I Want to Tell Goes Like This (Nightwood Editions, 2014) and several chapbooks including I Don’t Want to Die Like Frank O’Hara (Baseline Press, 2014). His work has appeared in journals, magazines, and websites across Canada including Geist, The Walrus, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Joyland and Hazlitt. More: mattrader.com + here

Lunar New Year’s Day, Year of the Snake
appeared in CAROUSEL 34 (2015) — buy it here

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