Matthias Regan

ENTER THE DOVE

Our client's room was off a narrow hall,
the walls of which were hung
with portraits of bald industrialists
in evenly spaced intervals.
The draft under plastic sheets
covering a broken window
jacked my teeth like loose balls
on the tennis courts below.

A half-opened door stooped before us
like a ledger lost to gutter wine.
Max opened the rest of it.
We stood inside a cavernous dorm,
the ceiling so sloped that bed-posts
on the far side touched plaster.
A lamp made by fixing a wick to gravel
and setting it in a vessel half-filled
with what's left from morning bacon,
illuminated a lurid scene.

The room was full of what you'd expect
to find in an office, plus standard
conjugal material, including massage oil,
lipstick and pills. Our client draped
plenty of face over a gray dress,
lounging, despite the heat, beside
a luscious fire. Her name was Dove.

A bird of the same name perched
on a post above her bed. She said
she'd soon go where doves are found.
We bowed low to the obvious lie
and found seats on empty bunks,
a fractured, gawking loop of wanna-be
snoops. Each of us did his best
to replace the lurid scenes in our collective mind
with emptier images. Mother's little helpers,
that’s us. Max cleared his throat.
Say what? Joe inquired, super polite.


Matthias reads "Enter the Dove":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Matthias confesses: "'Enter the Dove' is from an unpublished collection of lyrics that tell the story of an investigation set partially in Raymond Chandler's L.A. and partially in a Hardy Boys novel. Although I grew up on Poe, I didn't know poetry and detective fiction could go together until Kenneth Fearing showed me how."

MATTHIAS REGAN has published a book-length collection of poems, Gapers' Delay, and numerous chapbooks, including Charades/The Crooked Path, CHVMS, Oil Slick Rainbows, and others.