Matthew M. C. Smith is a working-class Welsh
writer from Swansea. He is Pushcart and Best of the Net-nominated and won the
R.S. Thomas prize at Gwyl Cybi in 2018. He is the author of The Keeper of Aeons
and also edits Black Bough Poetry. @MatthewMCSmith Insta: @smithmattpoet
Also on FB
Field X
Trees
stand sentinel,
boughs
glisten black.
Banks
of leaves,
tumble
to field’s edge,
a ditch
brook murmurs,
orange
blood of iron trickle.
Scare
of crow, sky,
speck
of hawk, high;
brook,
river
mast,
transmitter,
red
pulse
on
signal spire.
Fields
tilled, stilled,
a
picking bird
tapping
a barren bower.
Tear-salt
winds
bleach
a long skull
and
whistle wire.
Somewhere, General Custer Stares at a Cheese Plant
My Grandfather is six-foot one and leggy in his tub chair.
I count seven ashtrays on the glass table and countless cups.
The light of the TV flickers on his face and reflects tiny in his white,
marble eyeballs. A hunched silverback in a black leather jacket,
he fires up a lighter, dragging deeply. My grandfather talks
about the Americans and how we will fall out with them and ally
with Russia. He tells me for the umpteenth time how it wasn’t
Lee Harvey Oswald but someone on the grassy knoll
in suit and shades and about the mafia and Cuba and Castro.
He’s drawn stick men on fag packets and saves Benson and Hedges
vouchers – a send-away for Motown Soul Classics. He tells me how he met
Ernest Borgnine in London and how Sophia Loren is the most beautiful
woman
in the world. He watches Attenborough, eyeing a macaw with suspicion.
and reaches out to a bag of broken biscuits. All around, the smell of
cigarettes
is overwhelming, permeating every surface and crevice.
There are socks on the floor and a vest draped over a 12-inch Hiawatha
carrying an infant. All over my grandfather’s, there are ‘Red Indians’
figures;
just one General Custer with a rifle staring at a drooping cheese plant.
A pair of ‘Y’ fronts, a pack of cards and a coat hanger are strewn
across
a Johnny Mathis record and there are saucers and receipts and bits of
paper
all over the table and shelves. My grandfather collects us from
school in a rattling, thumping Morris Minor, held together inside
with hooks. Wood frames of moss and a battered, sun-bleached
leather interior. My grandfather has a polo neck and a paunch
and a magazine under his armpit. Dogs go crazy for him wherever he goes
and somehow, he knows every stranger after a single look. He’s still
there
in our photo at home in that jacket, standing like an ageing Roger
Moore,
one eyebrow raised, his hair high, brilliant ash-white. Three streets
away,
his flat is vacant. The Indians are wrapped in paper in our hall.
General Custer
is in a bag in a shed covered in ghost-spiders. We play Motown Classics.
Prometheus Regrets
I carried the secret of fire
to the shadowed isles of the
earth,
gave them heat and light,
the power of the gods. The people
triumphed with this flame,
retelling my story as if I was a cheat,
satiated by the gore, my innards
spilling
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