The Tourist
by Michelle Matthees
You reach for the door and greet the explosion, a slow-motion calm flattening everything. Here comes the interpretation of a microphone’s blue puff, running. For the newly deaf there is the distorted pantomime of car alarms. You are in a hurry to understand something, for example, that all glass contains its eventual shard. You lay under a large one still smudged with children’s fingerprints. A square of paper is pinned to your shirt, your name misspelled. It’s your receipt, one of those mushy ones from Eastern Europe printed with vegetable ink. It’s closing time. A grandmother in slippers lifts from her three-legged stool, sighs, and with her broom sweeps the large pieces of glass from your around body to form an asterisk.
Michelle Matthees has published two books of poetry, Complicated Warding, about institutionalization circa 1900, and Flucht, about Eastern Europe and adoption. A graduate of the University of Minnesota MFA Program, she has been awarded numerous grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, The Jerome Foundation, and ARAC. More information about her work can be found at www.michellematthees.com.