matthew estvanic matthew estvanic is a teacher from yellow springs, oh. his work has previously appeared on deep cleveland junkmail oracle, and his chapbook, "salt of the earth," was published on deep cleveland press.   Ohio sonnet Ohio bebe doll so flat & Celtic green flinching toddler-light at each flash of electricity on leafy young skin as I count the thunder seconds & try to keep my ribs closed-up. The heart will escape if you let it, onto steel scales at weigh stations jammed with truckers in pocket-tees, thru the exits the manicured woods clasping ghosts of Indian wraiths & smuggling the forest floor animus. 71 your sash & I your pageant beau         fat fingers slid over your radiant gown        prurient thrill for your skin & my bones.   In The Light I. The Lights Newness is to be savored. Under traffic lights, aware gazes, the maize fortune of paper lamps, moons with divots, the womb of smiles & balsam-tinged lotioned hands illuminated in reveal-the-teeth spectre, orange dusk retreating over the mounded Rubber City,                                     cardiac drums painted scratched-grey as they grind the future into the chest thru the spirits down the misanthropic & throbbing lower torso & push it down to lacquered parquet to live, die, come back after the longest weekend, spread itself thirteen times through flooded valleys amuck with straw ... THESE ARE THE LIGHTS focused on a face, a dreadlock that torques as a fully realized woman owns the truth like a newborn christened in blood. II. Saeta WE MAKE MEANING        by talking over the facts of dead-end jobs        or chatting up the ethics of a world leader        photographed in his underpants for a public        eating her own like pagans gone resourceful        once their last sheep moans into aimless silence. WE MAKE MEANING        putting three U.S. dollars scented        with the essential sweat of a sincere mother        calling strangers to keep the house worm        onto a hipster counter to respect the venue. WE MAKE MEANING        adorning our bodies (that summersault heavily        towards middle age & the sterility of good-enough)        in the best pricey-looking cheap rags purchased        still beyond our red-blooded means, just to trim        our asymmetrical statue - or to be base about it        we try and look "cute"; and we are, we're beautiful. WE MAKE MEANING        offering honest stimulus to the human        coral reef standing before us, lit        by ceaseless blue waters of disclosure        which rock and sway under torrential skies. III. The Graffiti Auteurs Oh Akron! Oh Cleveland! We call. We call... ... poems in the place of our staple breads drowning in the wine of consequence. We are scratching out recent epic history on the exposed cornerstone of an immense ruin, our hands blood-blistered from the chisel, the transaction of our fingers' desperate pressure & the unnerving posterity of the stonework. We are bathing in scant light, our nakedness a beautiful, lascivious entanglement best vantaged by watching us all gather outside a nightspot & prim & flirt & exchange cellular phone numbers under some phony but externally harmless guise. We dance in light as we jester, nude & beading with self-mustered sweat. We are one set of painted lips on a chalice cast in perfect imitation of the cupped hands of a child --- thirsty for wine, and water called to decree the difference between them.   Ohio - 5/15/05 The world de- & re-evolves so obliquely                                From geometric suburbs rife with traffic jams & mothers chewing prescriptions Into gentle hills & roadside stands - auto-repair garages at the hips of houses where a rusty school bus holds court in the patchy yard And ending at tract housing glued and finger-woven atop soybean fields & behind a massive, garish retail store where nothing stood before.

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