Superfecta
poetry by Clay Matthews
Publication date: April 15 2008
ISBN: 0-9796255-5-6
84 pages
$13.95

SUPERFECTA examines our relation to time and memory with surprising energy and consistent empathy. The tension between system and chance connect Clay Matthews’ poems, balanced as they are between the abstractions of symbol and the immediacy of language. For Matthews, there is a thin line dividing the body’s physicality and the wonder of the mind, where “The cartography of a rat is the same for all species/ in that it is always a map of the unknown.” Matthews writes about our desire to identify mythos in everyday experience, and celebrates when it’s discovered amid our anxious and uncertain place in history. PREORDER TODAY Book will ship April 15

About Clay Matthews:  Clay Matthews’ poetry has appeared in h_ngm_n, Laurel Review, lit, Court Green, Forklift, Ohio, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of two chapbooks: Muffler
(h_ngm_n b_ _ks) and Western Reruns (End & Shelf Books).

Blurbs: “Clay Matthews’ big-hearted poems swell with a flash-bang intellect that serves heaping portions of humor, trouble, and love. These poems are fantastic. Dexterous in a range that includes everything from Galileo to the Allman Brothers, this debut collection puzzles and laughs wildly—singing full-throated through the latitudes of our lives. It is a French Silk pie filled with rusty nails. Matthews is here to tell us that this truckstop reliquary is beautiful and more than enough. Superfecta sizzles and glows.” —Alex Lemon, author of Mosquito (Tin House Books) and Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions)

“If you like poetry, you must read this book by a young writer of exceptional talent. Clay’s poems are well-crafted, incisive, and worthy of your attention. They make me look forward to his future books with great anticipation.” —Ai, author of Dread (w.w. Norton & Co.) and Vice (winner of the National Book Award, w.w. Norton & Co.)

“Superfecta shows us that a good bet is not just fortune but a sense for the soul of the fast track. These poems set a sure pace of casual confidence of voice and humor, with a gift for detail as genuine as a road trip to Tunica and a forty-dollar room at the Best Western. This book is infused from beginning to end with the gambler’s joy in starting over, or, as Matthews puts it, “on some mornings/we are geniuses each time we learn to pedal and remain /upright.” —Lisa Lewis, author of The Unbeliever (winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, University of Wisconsin Press) and Silent Treatment (National Poetry Series, Penguin Books)

Poems:

Poem with a Forecast on Either End

Ice, wind, the eternal rock star’s inscription glowing on a tree
in the middle of Kansas somewhere, Carpe noctem, man,
don’t let the bastards steal your thunder. In another room,
a woman. In another room a television and a weatherman
spouting off history in the form of record snow accumulations.
Twas’ just a breeze when I awoke and by suppertime the world
had put on its game face. I’m tempted to tell myself this has
never happened before. One event in the chain of events, one
person in all the people, one city in one state in one country
America you are cold, cold today. I was stranded once on the side
of the road—the middle of winter in flip-flops and a T-shirt,
I’d only gone out to drive, really, and I finally hitched a ride
with some old man who was kind enough to stop for me.
You never really care about that road to Damascus until
you find yourself outside Damascus and looking in. The man
drove along, no radio, only me and him in an old, boxy sedan
full of used auto parts, and he constantly coughing and spitting
out the window, saying This weather is nothing compared
to what it was like in the trenches back in the war. So I felt
guilty for being cold, though that was not his intention. I felt
guilty for having not fought for my country, though as of yet
I haven’t seen a war in my lifetime worth fighting for. I felt
guilty for sharing his heater, guilty for being young and maybe
too wild, the guilt of a lifetime of before and after and ever.
I had him drop me off at the first church I saw because I wanted
to walk home. And now I wish I could see him again sometime,
though I doubt I’d even remember his face. I want to say Old man,
I’m sorry. Thank you. You were a real fucking lifesaver back there.
But why do we speak to someone as if our life were a road.
How do we not. And so winter comes again. Come winter, come.
The pasture that has slowly gone brown will soon go white.

________________________________

Another Lesson Learned, Again

Tell the countertop I’m alone today, drinking coffee
and wondering how long it’s been since I last ate
rhubarb pie. The waitress stares at the big clock
on the wall, and I think she’s expecting patriarchy
to end at the top of the hour. I’m tempted to say
Give it up. But my face is not that kind of face
and I’ve seen the way she moves around a grease fire.
I’m reading the back of a stranger’s newspaper
and have therefore also been marginalized. How sad
to be a third-page story. How sad to be pasted
on the fridge. The soup comes and already I have
envisioned burning my mouth. This time tomorrow
you might find me eating slower. Cursing the future
I saw but went on with—skin hanging from the mouth’s roof
like a white apron on a hook by the door.