Matthew Manera

Matthew Manera was born in a land that had nothing to do with him, was thusly named as someone else by his parents, and lived as such for a long while, during which time he almost successfully rose above his unfortunate beginnings by composing, playing various stringed instruments, and recording songs that he hoped would explain himself to a confusing world. (Here, one might take a breath.) Something, however, was not quite right, and his hands rebelled against him by shouting arthritis into his fingers, at which point he recalibrated his existence, changed his name, became himself, took up a pen, and began writing about it all (and making some of it up). Thus does he continue to this very day. And oh yes, he has published stories, poems, and a novel, all with reputable purveyors of literature.


 


If our lives are inescapably linear

 

If our lives are inescapably linear,
if they are but necessary
trajectories of desire
hoping to distinguish themselves
as the warp or weft of some
serendipitous weave
(let us call this “falling in love”)
or as the escher-like angle
of a duplicitous staircase
(let us call this a “career”) –
if our lives are so inevitably
euclidean, that would explain
why God is so final about
punishment and redemption
and why I failed high school geometry.

Against the clean lawbound
lines of mathematical proposition
I was a splash in Monet’s
field of wild poppies,
and unlike the priest of logic and severity
the woman in the poppy field,
she who lowered her parasol
as a gesture of defiance against gentility
or perhaps of honour towards the sun,
she does not fail me.


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