THREE POEMS

By Matthew Yates

Elegy of Waiting

but so you see how quickly the wind grows
labyrinthine the more you try to move
along it like a leaf

& though my loneliness is born
of the universal loneliness

it localizes like a cancer to my eye
& shades all things in
the aura of an aggressor

until i have flown-or-fought
everything to distance enough –

pay no mind to the isle in my head
or the prison i wear on my wrist

sometimes the only way i know to live
is simply not to have left yet

Endure

a bleak of
crested
window paint
peeled
right off
with
winter

ain’t
this thing
meant to last
at least
until
we’re
done?

The Hermit Watches the air for ghosts

Matthew Yates is a poet and artist from western Kentucky. His work can be found in Memoir Mixtapes and forthcoming in Barren Magazine and Rhythm & Bones Lit.