Ryan Mattern holds a BA in Creative Writing from CSUSB and MA in English from UC Davis. He is the recipient of the Felix Valdez Award for Short Fiction. His work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Ghost Town, and Poetry Quarterly. He currently serves in the US Army.
I was a rafter swallowed by a ceiling. I was a parking meter spilling out its coins. I took a number at the post office. I recited Al-Fatiha inside of Ar Rawdah. I hid as a cloud parceled by the sunlight. I jumped fences and a fountain. I kept quiet like a night. I yelled […]
Two Chop Road is where I found my ghost /Â squatting on a stump waiting for me.
Two Chop Road is where I found my ghost
squatting on a stump waiting for me.
He was reading the Mahabharata,
lamenting his own funeral
the colorless bore it was.
My ghost started asking for the buzzards,
the ones perched on the barbed wire fence
around the farmhouse inside which his bones
hummed against the moonlight.
My ghost wanted a Tibetan sky burial.
Two Chop Road is where I found my ghost
whittling a prayer wheel from the limb
of a bull pine, his small hands working
earnestly in the night, the dark opening
around him like wildflowers.
A poem by Ryan Mattern
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