Matt Longabucco
from NOCTURNES/NIGHT MEDS
II.
some have a gift for the passage of days in their average,
others an immunity,
new humans pushing from the future
cast a long shadow over technique,
one translation calls two years of wandering “desperate”
but the other says it’s the wanderer himself who’s “sick at heart”
set up camp where the nerves terminate
trial I may have invented, for the real thing nothing can be done
don’t forget the end of The Age of Innocence,
when you gossip about scandal you help weave the net
that will be used to constrain you, too,
should you ever decide to want something less vague
than what’s wanted for you
lately we’re stiffs, avatars
while in the next room our players argue logistics
and we wish what every avatar has vainly wished—
to dissolve back into the source
that was mud, that once braved the kiln
III.
those honking geese would fit right in on Bushwick Ave
the risk of not stealing through the city but becoming one of its fixtures
shut out from every dwelling, lashed by a storm of hype
all the NYC Parks site reports about Willoughby
is that he married a Duffield, Brooklyn royalty
where is security looser, usage down
sunshine more on riverbank cascading
so alone it’s menacing or like some minor, deviant myth
crossing fantasy, that lurching sea, tied fast with a rope
they held a lighter underneath, to fuse the knot
he makes it home, he’s so very weary, but then...the suitors
if future loves exist, we’re not permitted to know
though knowing, we might take courage
possibility resides in strangers
whose silence becomes a token or favor
you’re far off, twisted in parties and perfume
look, they’re not sad poems, they’re celebratory
they celebrate sadness
if celebrate means find intricate
bike helmet claps my thigh the while
hung it by a hook under the bar and later found a soft gray mouse
curled up inside, fast asleep
one obsession that serves as an ark for all the rest
V.
the clouds lower and everyone splits
a shell clings to me
or more precisely to a puckered membrane I wear as a sheath
the way one can hardly breathe inside one’s fate,
beg the birds that chirp at dawn to clip it free
one person’s disillusionment makes the other their stooge
poet who advises make a list, make a list
by my count some of Odysseus’s crew die three or four times,
unwelcome to everyone but an athlete with a waist like a reed
pain, the lover who calls at night
to wither resolve
a colleague’s son died
people wander this food court
I know I’m meant to think of them
as subjects of a technocratic order
but they’re so baffled and hungry
the day this, the day that
the day did not cooperate
58 degrees, “feels like 44”
fifty feels like the seafront churning while we sleep
this is a (fragmentary) poem to explain the inside
where mind is panicking that intimidation knows our scent
and is always the same
since that long-ago afternoon it first introduced itself
to a uselessly weak child’s body
then departed the scene before anyone else arrived
or just hid in the corner to stifle a perverted fit
Matt Longabucco is the author of the poetry collection Heroic Dose, and M/W: An essay on Jean Eustache’s La maman et la putain, a book-length study of a landmark of French cinema and its creator. The Hummingbird is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2026.
