Malak Mattar, Untitled (detail), 2024, charcoal on paper
O Hollywood (3)
BUSTER KEATON
All the homeless on my street
are falling one half inch
above the ground. Fist in mouth,
life is always physical first.
There is always at least a sound.
When the men in the black
sedan drive by laughing it
is just begun
to rain. All the worms are pushed
up from underneath
the ground.
The celluloid of our silent
film burns up and all around
the world is just
the body
seven days before it is found.
Matthew Dickman is currently a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas, received the 2000 C. Hamilton Bailey poetry fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts, and has recently been published in _Tin House, Clackamas Literary Review, Poet Lore, _and Rhino.