Matt Sadler

North by Northwest

On a hike we encounter
the ruin, a single raised wall
blocking our view of the sea,
we cross the threshold hand in hand,

a dead love married in a dead
church, the ceiling pure blue sky
sacking the brick crumbs and
the old stone cross

is a wonder of the past
the firework grass threatens
to swallow.

This is the North Sea, county
Antrim, and the girl is radiant
in a blue dress dulled to shimmer
by that sky. And this is a

memory, the future of the past,
the hazel wand lost
in the thicket of hazel.

And the girl is a ghost, tired
of wandering around in my
story for no good reason,
looking at the ghost white

sheep dotting the hillside
between the raised scar beds
of old stone walls.

* * *

Night at the Museum

Trying to be an honest father, I wrap myself in the tree wrap lights and suffer only minor, inconsistent burns. The children mistake me for a rash and giggle into the interactive intransitive. They touch

screen me. It’s all so weird I spork the porch floor and paste the dead spiders into an art collage on my skin and call it “the danse” with an s instead of a c. When the girls get scared

I try to convince them it was all a game but I’m art now and no one believes art even though art is forever.

* * *

Matt Sadler is the author of The Much Love Sad Dawg Trio (March Street) and Tiny Tsunami (Flying Guillotine). His work has recently appeared in Indiana Review, Open Letters Monthly, Diagram, and Eleven Eleven, among others, and he is Poetry Editor at Versal. He teaches writing and film in the suburbs of Detroit, where he lives with his wife and family.