Carlo Matos: A Boy Lost
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
A Boy Lost by the Whole of the World
The difference between unfulfilled objects
is mourning is leaving is humiliating like
bits of ribbon broken clasps brass lockets.
The work of distance is also buried under lost
addresses and phone numbers embarrassingly
saying too much and, interestingly, too little,
the first great carnage of human hands.
Without being told very much, what shatters gathers him up again
perhaps more than he should or ought to,
drawing in kin in kind in kindling.
In what familiar territory,
what maze what island what comportment of phrase
might a person ensconced in tradition be considered the whole story:
a bad seed a boyfriend [his first but not his last]?
It appears the process was known to create
a great deal of exasperation, which he displayed
during a stunning departure from the room he had just been standing in,
a boy lost by the whole of the world.
This poem originally appeared in our ebook The Queer Body.
Carlo Matos is a queer author who has published ten books, including The Quitters (Tortoise Books) and It's Best Not to Interrupt Her Experiments (Negative Capability Press). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Iowa Review, Hobart, DMQ Review, Rhino, PANK, and Diagram, among many others. Carlo has received grants and fellowships from Disquiet (Portugal), CantoMundo, the Illinois Arts Council, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the La Romita School of Art (Italy). He is a founding member of the Portuguese-American writers collective Kale Soup for the Soul and a winner of the Heartland Poetry Prize. He currently lives in Chicago, is a professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, and is a former MMA fighter and kickboxer. He blogs at carlomatos.blogspot.com. Follow him on twitter @CarloMatos46.
