ALEX MATTRAW

keeping score

estriol sickle 

asks when

sticks stoned

phrases inside 

my plain 

burnt gold 

wick I

cling will

acorn heart 

cramp never 

break her 

kingly heel 

amen foot 

feeling split 

semblance age-

less, song

Because of the shape it makes in your mouth
after John Keats

sorrow isn’t 

lonely upshore

the bridge 

wears silver 

hooks moon-

sweat, sun-

fur stretches

elm rivers

sour you 

buy feathered 

greens eclipse

drowsy shadow 

glut felt 

reason songs 

twitch hillside 

bones lit 

inside you 

eliminate love 

to sleep 

through night

Cabin Dream

chirrup rabble

coven I

salute meadow

womb grass-

land attitude

sage erasures 

•  

yellow

patterns partner

us without

consent floods

through ceiling 

beams open 

•  

deciduous bile

in honeyfog

dreams you 

ask why  

morning swallows  

•  

jayjig munkchat 

rituals spill

out cabin

rafters of

wood living 

room involuntary 

bathwater verses 

•  

gnats crown 

softer August 

sap we

allow whole 

bodied and

new rust

unhinged 

heart sweat 

under worn 

pine sleeves

to field 

wonder

Ana[1]

Like a child 
you went out 
walking in the dark
for the first time, steady
harrow to sour lily. 

What is a day? 
You are perennial 
rise from gypsum, 
thirty-three stories 
braid moon milk. 
Hope buries  
and is born through 
discourse with berries, 
ice, shells, blood 
and all of death’s 
other messengers. 

You somehow unearthed
yourself from meadow 
leap into neon air 
or was it aria seeds 
that need tossing 
shadows. Dirt 
thrashing. Poppy 
verbena, wall 
flowers need
no smell. 

Now head of baby’s breath, 
your strands gale-
-songs. Earth-aether, 
slow panicle
of tiny clouds.

The root of
desire to remember
barefoot florets, 
you grow windy from
stone and accumulate 
reasons why gravity 
breaks grief into atoms’ 
flushed green
earth-body, ever
silueta. 

Alex Mattraw (she/her) is a queer, neurodivergent poet and essayist living in Berkeley. Her third full length collection of poetry, Raw Anyone, was published by Berkeley's Cultural Society in 2022. Recent poems and reviews are featured or forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, Jacket2, Tupelo Quarterly, VOLT, and elsewhere. Alex is also the founder and curator of the Bay Area reading series, Lone Glen, now in its twelfth year.