
OXIDANT | ENGINE : Issue
Matty Layne Glasgow
How to be strong
Truth is
I cry for weeks at a time.
Truth is
my cheeks tasted of saline
long before
my mother died, flushed & full
of something
like shame. My eyes needed to
let go.
I’ve been told not to break
a line
without forethought, but
melancholia doesn’t
come on like that. Some of us
never learned
to smile & mean it.
If I could,
I wouldn’t
be writing this poem, so I’m
gonna let
it feel like it doesn’t need to be
a man, to be
brave. I’m gonna let this poem
lie
in the fetal position in its
apartment for days
not knowing
when
or if
it will move again.
grounded
at seven, I learned
the law of gravity:
eyes pulled down-
ward to feathers
to wings splayed up-
on the grass & fire-
dusted chest to sky
like ants spilling
from those empty
eyes, & when I fell
i saw the clouds be-
neath my feet. how the
world refused to stay
in place. it still falls &
crawls where it does
not belong—in hills
in mounds fashioned
of feather & bone.

Matty Layne Glasgow is the author of the forthcoming collection deciduous qween, selected by Richard Blanco as the winner of the 2017 Benjamin Saltman Award with Red Hen Press. Matty’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Missouri Review, Crazyhorse, BOAAT, Muzzle Magazine, The Collagist, Rattle, and elsewhere. He currently reads poetry for The Adroit Journal.