PoetryMagazine.com Editor's Featured Poet Matthew Lippman

Matthew Lippman
USA

Photo Credit: Meriah Burman

Matthew Lippman is the author of two poetry collections, MONKEY BARS (Typecast Publishing) and THE NEW YEAR OF YELLOW (Sarabande Books.) He is the recipient of the 2010 Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW.

RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE

The rhino came through the window
as if he were dropped from an airplane.
He had no parachute on and the glass went everywhere.
No one was hurt.
The kids had cups of juice.
They laughed really loud.
I was in the kitchen
with the knife, cutting scallions, breaking walnuts.
The firefighters came with their red hats and black boots
because no one wanted to scream.
In firefighting, if you scream,
the fire will become beast of blue flame.
Across the way, the meadow had a scar.
It was from the sun.
It was from the stupid boys in their ATVs
that went really fast and got really drunk
and forgot that yesterday, a whole village of women did everything in their power
to sacrifice their bodies and feel beautiful all at once.
Birth is a random act of violence
no matter how many hours go into conception.
The sweat, the flesh, the leaky mornings with no hope.
The rhino gave us hope.
He came from nowhere
like a Russian satellite with no more juice,
no more blip.
When he crushed the kitchen
we thought it was the end.
Not for us alone
but for the whole of human stillness.
But it wasn’t.
It was just a rhino falling through our window
like a gladiola picked at sunset or a boy holding a girl’s hand and she,
in her brunette curls,
holding his back.

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