Matthew Siegel's Blood Work (CB Editions, 2015)

Some favourite passages from Matthew Siegel's Blood Work:


...I take my benadryl with beer, thank you very much,
sleep like a cut under a band aid....

from "[Sometimes I don't know if I'm having a feeling]"

I wear this living skin--

wear it in the sunlight,

in the forest, in the city--

wear it like a suit

of metal, a suit of gauze--

my face of abalone, of straw

assembling, trembling

apart in the water.

from "The electric body"

I enter the field. The field contains me.

last line of "The edge of the field"

And my father pulls off into the gas station

to fill his empty tank. The flow of gas sounds

like the flow of blood. The same pressure.

The same insistence. The same rush and fill.

last stanza of "On the way to the airport I fail to tell my father

I left some meat in the refrigerator."

I was getting stoned in the kitchen with my mother

when my sister, wrapped in clouds, filled the room

with lightning.

*

Each vertebrae in my spine tingled like radio static.

from "Weather of the Body"

No, I am not hurting in this moment.

I am memory's lips sewn shut.

from "Overlooking the City"

I've got too many needs for a month like November. 

from "Living with You"

You can buy Blood Work directly from publisher CB Editions here.