Poems By Matt Ryan

Rest Stop


The motorists drag their heavy boots
across the pavement and whisper
pajama-soft thank yous when I hand
them a cup of coffee and tell them
to get some much needed rest.
Like anyone who’s worried
about someone, I know the cure lies
in their ability to start imitating me.
I’m an evangelist for the church of laziness.
My audience thinks this break is purgatory,
a pipe clogged that’s stopping
their travel to a better well.
Death, though, is a few miles away.
Slow down this interstate, I say.
You see all types at the rest stop,
which means one type because that’s all
that’s left. This one type who is in such
a hurry to get back on the road
and pass the same worthless idiot
they passed just minutes earlier.
I tell all of them about the thrill of an ass-sitter’s
high. How the blisters under my jeans
pocket formed the smiley face the
Mona Lisa has been trying to crack for years.
The real estate next to my crack is happy
and I’m inviting the world to live there.
Come, hear my sermon. Buttocks euphoria
is the only way to salvation. 


Icicle Embrace

The icing on the earth’s birthday

cake is made of ice. Candles won’t

penetrate it. There will be no fire

this year. The earth is too old

and wise to get excited by a small

fire. It outgrew its need for heat.

The cavemen, after all, were stupid.

Watch our planet orbit toward the others:

it will hug them, like we do our

brothers and sisters, without any arms.

because it’s so gloriously postmodern.

Matt Ryan's poems have appeared in numerous journals. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee, editor for Best New Writing and English professor at Concordia University St. Paul.  He holds the MFA in Writing from Spalding University.