hannah matzecki / two poems

A History Of The City I Live In

Still, my lungs

remember

even as the architecture

forgets and forgets and forgets

that under the pavement there are ostrich bones

buried beside black gold and

a million pretty fictions

(all earnest and well-loved)

transcribed onto old gum wrappers

or lost socks or final

wills and testaments, but spoiled

by inky milk and dividends—

that once

we had lemons

and blooming orange groves too,

that we snarled as we called them

ghosts, even though we knew

that they were angels—

now, when I breathe,

they breathe.

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Good Girl

(i.) (ii.)

Beautiful world, I asked Beautiful world, I tried

for you to find me to be a good girl

and then I waited but I can't stop turning quilt

for my turn— hems into tightropes and my

I kept my teeth saline clean toes, they like to teeter

I kept my hands soft, as if I on the edge of an edge—

were new, I nodded see, my father taught me there is

in tempo, all peaches and peonies a respite

since you told me all along in the breaking, sometimes peace

how it's better to be small needs a thunderstorm,

so I'm small not a cup of tea

enough to fit under the wing or even a biscuit, and anyway

of a house finch or inside the pocket beautiful world

of a sweater knitted what's so wrong

from soft wool, just with a few

for you bad decisions now and then

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Hannah Matzecki is a writer, mother, and the editor of Kitchen Table Quarterly. Her poetry has been featured in West Trade Review and The Ear, as well as on any refrigerator with those little word magnet tiles. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and two demanding cats.