Ted Mathys is the author of The Spoils, forthcoming from Coffee House Press, and Forge, from the same publisher. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, his poems have appeared in such venues as American Poetry Review, BOMB, Conjunctions, and Jubilat. His work has been anthologized in A Best of Fence: the First Nine Years, and Verse, 1994 - 2004: The Second Decade, as well as translated into Italian for La nuova poesia Americana: New York. Originally from Ohio, he has lived and worked in Hong Kong, Berlin, and New York and currently studies international affairs at Tufts University in Boston.

Purchase The Spoils here.

Adaptation

It was not in my nature to prefer progress on principle.
Nor was it in my nature to oppose to the artificial
ficus in the optometrist’s office a dogwood in wilderness
dropping a solitary blossom into a pool of koi,
for that, neither, was ever in my nature. My nature
was unknown to me, but hi-def nature shows
were growing on me, flash frozen Alaskan salmon
was growing on me, and MapQuest, and happy hour,
and water bottled at the source. It was not in my nature
to ascribe purity to the past. Nostalgia a wasted emotion,
waste an ecological concern. Tomatoes in December
were growing on me, a vine of them garlanding my neck.
Adaptation was in my nature, so I grew inured to this.
The par-five on the back nine with a dogleg left
at the clubhouse was growing on me. And oven cleaner,
a 24 hour call center, free checking appended to my chest.
My safety was growing on me. I was so safe
I could scarcely breathe. Boneless skinless bloodless
chicken breasts metastasized over my thighs like scales.
Gas logs, the derivatives market, surround sound
and LL Bean catalogues were growing on me.
Though I had grown immobile and unable to see,
this was in my nature. I was an ecology.

The National Interest

We are interested in long criminal histories
because we’ve never bedded down in a cellblock.
With the sibilance of wind through the swaying
spires of skyscrapers as my witness. When I say
cover your grenades I mean it’s going to rain I mean
there is mischief in every filibuster of sun.

We are interested in rigorously arranging
emotions by color as we’ve never been fully
divested of blues. With drinking till my fingernails
hurt as my witness, with hurt as my witness.
When I say be demanding I mean be fully
individual while dissolving in the crowd.

We are interested in characters who murder
because we’ve never committed it or to it.
With an origami frog in a vellum crown spinning
on a fishing line from the ceiling as my witness.
When I say please kneel with me I mean between
every shadow and sad lack falls a word. 

We are interested in ceaselessly setting floor joists
because we’ve never pulled a pole barn spike
from a foot. With bowing to soap your ankles
in the shower as my witness, lather as my witness.
When I say did you see the freckle in her iris I mean
the poem must reclaim the nature of surveillance.

We are interested in possessing others who possess
that which we possess but fear losing in the future.
With a fork as my witness. A dollop of ketchup,
hash brown, motion, with teeth as my witness.
When I say you I don’t mean me I don’t mean
an exact you I mean a composite you I mean God.

We are interested in God because we can’t
possess God, because we can’t possess you.  
With a scrum of meatheads in Izod ogling iPods
as my witness, technological progress as my witness.
When I say no such thing as progress in art I mean
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”

We are interested in ambivalence as ribcages
resist being down when down, up when up.
With the swell of the argument and the moment
before forgiveness as my witness. When I say power
is exclusion I mean a box of rocks we don’t
desire to deduce I mean knowing is never enough.

from A Soccer Ball for Dr. Kissinger

Lieber Henry, you were supposed to be

metonymy for evil, a conceptual public Mensch
in possession of a ghastly seventies haircut
and bulletproof eyes, not a squat
body standing within body
heat of me beyond the chancery beyond
the waft of odorous July
asphalt in the capital, caught with the rest of us
in the crosshairs of the polar
symmetry of the reception hall
at the Ambassador’s residence,
regarding the architectural leitmotif
of square upon clinical square upon
which cocktails and cross-cultural interaction
play out like game theory
on an imperfect grid, your pressed monkey suit
every bit as banal and ahistorical
as mine. You were supposed to wield
a snifter of cognac and a cigar or slambo
shots of Jäger in honor of your native
Fürth, not nurse
a glass of water and with
solemnity analyze the tripartite
balance of power forming between a wizened
carrot, a gherkin, and a gob of Ranch dip
on your buffet plate. The open bar opens
onto a terrace strewn with journalists
picking at jerk chicken & yammering about ag
policy and the tyranny of subsidies, opens
onto a four-tiered lawn bombed with magnolias
stepping down to a reflecting pool
chock full of tangerine sky. Public policy surfaces
from the accumulated perturbations
of private psychological histories
and private insecurities are predicated
in no small part upon the unforgiving
parameters of public norms
so what could it possibly mean
for both of us to be swatting with resolve
at the same damn cabbage moth
white and erratic as popcorn on a string
as it bounces up the lawn? A leveling? An end
to the logic of ambition? No more
than the incongruous protocols of official
and natural? You were supposed to sit
on too many boards to have shown
up at a function routine
as this, let alone piss in the same
public men’s room in the residence
as the rest of the Ambassador’s guests.
From across the marble partition
I listen to your tusk of urine
spear the water in the bowl
as I run a tusk of water over my palms
in the sink. The photo of you on the wall
dribbling a soccer ball past a humoring
Beckenbauer anticipates the stance you strike
as you emerge from the privacy of the stall
like a mass of thawing clay, approach the soap
dispenser, nod, drone
in your sonorous voice Good Evening.
Contained for a moment within my wingspan
is intimate circumstance made in an instant
public, historical, worldwide. I boil, clench, lunge

and respond Good Evening in kind.