Open Roads and Roadblocksoriginally published in print with Spellbinder Magazine
Sun streaking a face full of melody,
hair dancing to the music of the wind and
sunglasses reflecting mirrors
on this brush-stroked morning.
Her hands playing the strings on my battered blue jeans and
our bodies clicking and jazzing along
with the weaving back road.
We had so many memories carved into dirt penciled trails like these:
quick yanks of the wheel because I looked too long,
a kiss lingering at five over
and wondering where the next station was
but not caring enough to google it.
Slam the brakes!
Shake up uncertainty!
There it sat.
The line stopped.
The road block
taking our momentum.
The wind taken out of her hair
and
no place to go,
just time to wait
with our memories
obstructed
Bio: Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his wife and two daughters in New Hampshire. He was a BOTN 2021 nominee, is now a regular contributor at Fevers of the Mind and has poems and stories published in 50+ literary magazines with 100+ accepted pieces. His debut collection, Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities with Alien Buddha Press isavailable on Amazon, linked in the bio and also on his website.Follow him on Twitter: @McguirkMatthew and Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.
Website: http://linktr.ee/McGuirkMatthew Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities: https://www.amazon.com/Daydreams-Obsessions-Realities-hybrid-collection/dp/B09M5KY8HH/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Matthew McGuirk
The potatoes from the store
didn’t make it to a soup, the oven, or the fryer in time.
They sat too long on the counter,
waiting for our attention.
The golden skin growing dark eyes to see the kitchen
and their gaze watched us wander by.
They were soft and sprouted,
no longer something of use.
I threw them out the door
and kicked some dirt over them
to hide the evidence of neglect.
Soon, green shoots emerged;
new growth even in hard times.
Bio: Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his wife and two daughters in New Hampshire. He was a BOTN 2021 nominee, is now a regular contributor at Fevers of the Mind and has poems and stories published in 50+ literary magazines with 100+ accepted pieces. His debut collection, Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities with Alien Buddha Press isavailable on Amazon, linked in the bio and also on his website.Follow him on Twitter: @McguirkMatthew and Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.
I can’t write about you: sentences don’t fall like your hair does, fragments are too short to describe the big moments and run-ons can’t even start on the small ones. Transitions can’t bridge milestones with any authenticity, like the boxes from our last apartment shifting to our first house or a ring that means so much or our family expanding from 2 to 3 in the matter of hours or 3 to 4 in just as long. Exclamation points are nothing like your laugh and semicolons connect clauses, but it isn’t like your fingers in mine. The only one that seems to make any sense is the question mark because to me you are all the answers, but maybe I should just pick up photography at this point.
Bio:
Bio: Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his wife and two daughters in New Hampshire. He was a BOTN 2021 nominee, is now a regular contributor at Fevers of the Mind and has poems and stories published in 50+ literary magazines with 100+ accepted pieces. His debut collection, Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities with Alien Buddha Press isavailable on Amazon, linked in the bio and also on his website.Follow him on Twitter: @McguirkMatthew and Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.
A Rainy Day
Racket of rooftop rain
disappears down gutters
and into streams so wide
she jumps them with standing long jump arms.
She pats unbaked pies sitting in puddles waist deep
and smiles through a torrent that drowns out
any squeals of joy.
Other times, she grabs the umbrella
and totes it around like Mary Poppins,
singing, “a spoonful of sugar…” even though
she knows those lyrics don’t match the umbrella scene.
Somehow, her flowered raincoat doesn't get lost
in that downpour
and I learn before long,
the only time rain makes kids sad
is in that nursery rhyme we all sing
for some reason.
Bio: Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his wife and two daughters in New Hampshire. He was a BOTN 2021 nominee, is now a regular contributor at Fevers of the Mind and has poems and stories published in 50+ literary magazines with 100+ accepted pieces. His debut collection, Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities with Alien Buddha Press isavailable on Amazon, linked in the bio and also on his website.Follow him on Twitter: @McguirkMatthew and Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.
Tides
The sea erases traced lines in sand on dark nights:
the time your words landed wrong
or mind did,
a forgotten anniversary,
or the hasty message scribbled in a card
picked up at the last moment.
All the things I wanted to say and
all the things I didn’t
scrawled in the sand.
The tip of my foot drawing careful letters,
messages nobody would see.
Waves erase it all at high tide
scrubbing away angry phrases
before light touches beaches in the east.
My footsteps carry me home,
one after another
and soon they’ll disappear as well,
the evidence buried in granules of sand and
a wash of salt water
but my mind clean
dragged out to sea with all the other broken shells
and tangled seaweed.
Bio: Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his wife and two daughters in New Hampshire. He was a BOTN 2021 nominee, is now a regular contributor at Fevers of the Mind and has poems and stories published in 50+ literary magazines with 100+ accepted pieces. His debut collection, Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities with Alien Buddha Press isavailable on Amazon, linked in the bio and also on his website.Follow him on Twitter: @McguirkMatthew and Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.
Fevers of the Mind 