X.
The self-murder mystery
begins like this:
We are more likely
to kill ourselves
than be killed
by someone else.
I am the pistol
saying I will only
say this once.
Do not open
the tiny door
in the back
of your head.
All alone when
all alone, we
are asleep
inside our
murderer. There’s
a metal word
in the chamber
of my mouth
and my eyes
are bored out.
I’m a noose
using the body
against itself.
I see
what’s too awful
to be true—
that house
with one lit window,
my brother’s
punctured skull—
yet is.
X.
Your hands were delivered with the mail like postcards. There was nothing written on them, but I knew they had come from somewhere far away, because all the fingernails were painted
like stamps. I looked at the backs of your hands as if they were landscapes and tried to enjoy the sunset of your skin and riverbed veins, but could only wonder why we don’t have a word
for the backs of our hands. I think I put them in a drawer somewhere. Then they appeared in our glove basket, so I put them on. I punched one hand into the other, staring into
the foyer mirror. I was in a movie about to beat someone up real bad, but I didn’t actually have to, it was just a movie. My face looked incredible in the mirror, and I said, Inside
all our hands are smaller, more evil ones, even though you aren’t supposed to say anything true in a movie.
X.
Kafka said, A book
must be an axe
for the frozen sea
inside us, which sounds
great, but what good
is an axe against
a frozen sea?
Perhaps this is why
he said, while dying,
Destroy everything.
There is little comfort
in knowing there
are worse undertakings
than killing yourself.
Is it dangerous
to say these things?
I don’t think so.
Or I do. Either way,
don’t believe me.
There is no refuge
from yourself.
Matt Rasmussen’s poetry has been published in Cimarron Review,Water Stone Review, Mid-American Review, Paper Darts, MARGIE, New York Quarterly, Natural Bridge, and Dislocate, among others. He was a 2009 Bush Artist Fellow for Literature and has received awards, grants, and residencies from The Minnesota State Arts Board, The Corporation of Yaddo, The Loft Literary Center, The Jerome Foundation, Intermedia Arts, and The Anderson Center in Red Wing, MN. He currently teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College. His chapbook, Fingergun, was published in 2006 by Kitchen Press and he’s a founding co-editor of Birds, LLC, a small, independent poetry press.
