Most of Matejka’s works contain a formulaic balance between pointed, veiled sentences that I presume are based in personal history and crafted turns of language. “Do The Right Thing,” for example, summarizes a meeting with director Spike Lee, but contains lines such as “he edited me like my name/ was Pino” and “the missed free throw feeling in my chest.” Spike Lee didn’t literally edit the speaker as if he were a character in Do The Right Thing, but this language shows us how the speaker felt. Matejka likely chose this route, as opposed to saying “he changed the way I felt.” With the “free throw” line, once again, Matejka introduces an emotion often overlooked for poetry, more likely found on a Sportscenter recap. The idea of a missed free throw feeling in ones chest tells us how the speaker feels, but since a basketball game didn’t literally take place, Matejka shows us how the speaker felt.
Script Folio 43 Split pomegranate, common rhinoceros beetle, Scarlet Turks='s cap lily folding back it's red lips while anthers circle the pistil's one hand: above them six lines are written in chancery script with lettere tagliate , letters cut like the long lines of pasta our parents cut on our plate, the work of two people who never met. The two halves of each letter--below and above-- are severed or sewn together by inked chain links like those that knot a fence or a stitch that unravels the whole length of a sentence if a stray thread is pulled--chain letter, chain gang, chain mail, chain saw-- or those paper links that wrap themselves around the Xmas tree: eentsy weentsy spider sidling up to each letter, each word, casting and binding in silk as if to ravel and unravel once felt the same. ---------------------------- Food Foods were eaten like the grossness our parents turned into freedom tickets away from the kitchen table, the alteration of rules we didn’t know exis...
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