Matty//Konrad Ehresman

“Matty”

I am at the grocery store and for one moment I do not think of you/ My mind has busied itself
with totaling my groceries as I set them on the conveyor/ I have a knack for calculating the tax/
an intimate history with cost/ At $37.10 the cashier asks, “How are you?”/ That is all it takes for
my brain to abandon arithmetic/ for my jaw to unhinge itself from my skull/ I go to speak and
instead find my tongue dancing in the empty/ gums bloody with the memory of something solid/
and did you know, you were the only thing standing between my mouth and mutiny?/ My
stomach / a collection of wet squelches/ forces innards up and out the cavernous pits of my face/
there is a scream somewhere beside me as my liver lands among the candy display/ I try to leave/
to outrun my undoing/ but my intestines are wrapped around the wheels of my cart/ the thought
of you, quicker than these toeless feet/ How embarrassing/ to find I am so poorly stitched
together/ tell me, when did I make thread of you?

I catch a lung, half inflated and warm before it lands in the ‘take a penny, leave a penny dish’/
though I doubt it is worth much more/

I am making a horrible meaty sound/ a pitiful analogue to screaming/

How could you leave me here and think my body would not revolt?/ What kind of fool did you
become in the end, to think me strong enough to remain, when I don’t even have the strength to
shop alone/

The cashier manages a gasp between warbling wails/

God

This generation, so dramatic/

I roll my eyes across the linoleum/ I mean –

haven’t they ever seen

a man fall to

pieces?

Konrad Ehresman is a writer and creative living in Northwest Arkansas where he is pursing his MFA in Poetry. His work has been published in The Racket, Persephone Magazine, Bluebird Word, The Bridge and Impossible Archetypes among others. His debut Chapbook “Something Like Love: Gay Poems on Love and Heartbreak is available from Bottlecap Press. When he isn't writing, or reading anything he can get his hands on, you can find him baking far too much bread and being a general nuisance.