satnrose

Matt Cipov

TAKING THE NIGHT OWL FOR A MIDNIGHT RIDE

trying to shut the howling of the whistle out of my sleep trying to get
back to a memory that aroused me once upon a time taking the Night
Owl for a midnight ride did I ever want to say hello am I coming back
or going away the reason I left I don’t know the reason I am returning
I can’t say I don’t want you to wait but I need you to be waiting and I
always thought the future could be found in yesterday I thought I was
not a common outlaw I thought I was not on the lam I thought it could
not last forever the way a color feels to a blind man running down the
mountain flying on steel wheels with the wind screaming in my dreams



AN UNDISCOVERED NUMBER OF WILDERNESSES

I was under the delusion that simply being able to think of that door
meant that I could just walk through it this mistake was made in the
belief that I can have what I want was because you swore that it was
never placed before me so by then I was possessed of a feeling which
I probably will not under any condition assume to have a clear vision
and was not and never will be able to find the house with that damned
door and as for me who presumed to be not properly informed and so
told in no uncertain terms that I had never searched for it just because
I didn’t know that it existed or that I had to go through it even though
I’d navigated the rapids through an undiscovered number of wildernesses
just to get to you to get to that one place where we could be together



SOMETHING SPOKE IN AN UNKNOWN TONGUE UP IN THE TREES

there was four feet of snow on the fields the yellow hawk flew all night
the air had an edge I couldn’t tell false from true so I couldn’t make any
promises the wind rushed out of the West the icicles hung in a row and
my wounds were stubborn to heal there was something bad I wanted to
know I didn’t know I’d be coming back but after a time the river turned
rock brown the prairie went green again the seed grain was put into the
ground the planting moon rose East eventually the nights were hot and
black and then something spoke in an unknown tongue up in the trees



NOVEMBER TO NOVEMBER

I remember you were cooking supper on a wood stove when I picked
up the telephone I remember waking up to wonder where were you I
remember hours waiting for a call all the leaves were down the trees
were bare I remember November to November about a year ago so I
remember December March April June it seems like a it’s been half a
million years I remember wondering if the risk was good or bad and I
remember climbing up the mountain I remember thinking it was just a
wild goose chase in the morning I was flying over I remember looking
thinking there has to be something worth forgetting out of all of this



satnrose is a well-known antiquarian bookseller, and formerly a not-so-secret messenger in the innermost depths of Capitol Hill and K Street. He has been published in a number of literary magazines, but since his reincarnation as “satnrose” last year, he has been published in Evergreen Review, Iconoclast, Danse Macabre, Counterexample Poetics, Oysters & Chocolate, Apparatus, Gloom Cupboard, Mad Swirl, Literary Tonic, and others.