Matt Hart

APOLOGY CRISIS

When I flipped on the power
the impression of a miraculous intervention
was an unfortunate and immediate side-effect,
causing my defenses to crash and your resistance

to plummet.  I’m sorry.  What you experienced was merely
the silo door opening, the grain spilling out, the hatchling
taking its first ever breath.  Tonight would’ve been
our celebration of the fluttering mixed signals.

I’d have worn my reticular tie, and you
your numerous powders.  All the misery between
us would’ve dissolved in the strobe lights,
my breath on your furnace, your fork

in my socket.  If only we had understood
the new system sooner.  How under the new system
there’s a new system.  And how under the newer system,

a flock of geese comes between us, then a mobile home,
a tomahawk… both of us ashamed in the morning.

Matt Hart is a co-founder and editor of Forklift Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Canary, Ploughshares, and Salt Hill, among other journals. Recent work can be seen online at DIAGRAM, H_NGM_N, and TYPO. His first book of poems, who’s who vivid, is forthcoming from Slope Editions in 2006. He teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.