Two Poems by Matt Thomas

The Art Thief

She chased me down, caught me at an intersection, ran behind the car and recorded my plate on a white shopping bag which I thought was maybe from Baked & Wired, or a card shop, card shops I thought, also use those sturdy white bags, but the image of her gray head bent over the squashed bag, paling Eisenhower Building in the background, Potomac sky, 102 in August, etc.; what is called an indelible image, fled with from the scene after she strode around the car to rap the window convinced I had wronged her and I mumbled a denial unconvinced I had not, failing our interaction the same way that I failed my SATs, turning questions of fact into philosophy and so sped away when the light turned green while she shrunk in the rearview blocking E Street looking for the damage she was certain she’d accrued, thinking I’d escaped, which I had, but not with the thing she suspected me of stealing.

Metro Dancer

Requiring an audience to be alone,
flat metal strap like a barrette
between old school sun faded orange foam
headphones, cassette player humming,
an arm stretched like a cable
to the pole with a cupped hand sliding
up, down, bending knees in time
jeans hemmed by the carpet
worn black as if multitude others
had also abandoned convention
for slick chrome, every rider vibrating
above the groaning clattering,
speeding to uncertain landing pretending
to read or sleep maintaining proper frowns eyeing
the dancer, dreaming lost recalling
hand over hand that bottled fizz of youth
scratching from tinny headphones rebuking
the speeding commute, the functions and titles
shuttling up, down, a pump jack drawing
the question from where it has settled
into seams and every rider watching
also reaching, yearning, asking
where am I going, and why?

Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer, engineer, and poet. His recent work can be read in Pinhole Poetry, Susurrus Magazine, and elsewhere. Disappearing by the Math, a full-length collection, was published by Silver Boy in 2024. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.