Daisy Bell
by Matt Schroeder
art by Emmanuel de Witte
the only thing worth worrying about
is a palmful of honey on a summer day
or the heart hot as an eggless pan
if it doesn’t make sense make it over-easy
make it so sweet men would die for it
make it in the image you were made in
whispers believe said-image is who you loved most
in your last life which could have been
a stone a ribbon a stray who had had a home
but then lost it to the same hand that threw
the quickening double-dutch of past-perfect
who will have to answer for all the wasted chalk
& where does this land us anyway?
God’s grease-choir singing
I’m half crazy / all for the love of you
the thrill of public domain as familiar
as a street we can walk in our mind
& be brave enough to call it ours
silence the earliest lyric we learned to love
or was it the music of our mothers’
love rattling the pipes above our growing heads?
A particular Buddhist belief finds us floating
slowly over to-be parents as they cue up the music
& whomever we fall most in love with during their love
places our gender opposite them
when finally sown we begin to root
now from a dollop of honey comes the egg
what happens if I love my father the most
until he puts his hands on me for the first time
or my mother until she pulls my hair out in a fight?
What if I find it within myself to love them both
in equal yet different measures but can’t hold on to it all
if the cords get tangled & slip out of my hand?
Could I watch this love balloon away from us
floating across the silence of a parking lot
in the soft purple of a sun just barely set
could I stop with all the questions
& just let that be enough
Matt Schroeder is a poet, educator, and MFA candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in RHINO, Poet Lore, Grist, Swing, and elsewhere. In 2021 he organized and ran the first international writer's conference for students in Shenzhen.
