Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On

Adrian Matejka

... People, what you doing? ...It starts with big frisks in half-disc days.Cavalcade of wants, slim décolletagesall up in the affluence of forgetfulness.The haberdasher forgot a necessary button& now the ready body talks through the spacebetween zippers. This land of shiny unbuckles& high heels. Geography of I like it so much.Topography of I want it so much as we walkup the backside of a treble clef. It's an actualepistle—seaside with the heavy clouds,slick sunbathers minding their own libidos.Hair ties high noting wrists in the long arch& excavated bites in the land of rough play—red & smitten by the bright lake, a cityof fights right behind us. These sticky treesburning beautifully, these edged pee on me 'sat the ledge of decency. Sometimes the tonguetrips & it feels like a slip down the throatof a handy trumpet. I still don't know howit ends: leathery reliquary in my thin falsettomaybe, while your hips look like a coupleof question marks just about to hook up.

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Adrian Matejka is the author of six books, most recently a mixed media collection inspired by Funkadelic, Standing on the Verge & Maggot Brain (Third Man Books, 2021), and a collection of poems Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin, 2021). His collection The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013) was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize in poetry. He lives in Indianapolis and was Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19.

Cover of Standing on the Verge

Nashville, Tennessee

“I have always worshiped the poet, the poet is a shapeshifting mastermind bringing emotions, histories, and ideas to the realm of the living. In The Big Smoke Adrian Matejka reminds me that Jack Johnson is America, made in America and a product of its own distorted myths. With MAGGOT BRAIN with word and the memory of a song that is both a sacred lullaby and a fight song, he has opened a portal to reclaim a complicated love."

—Meshell Ndegeocello

“Adrian Matejka was one of the first poets I read, one of the first poets I loved to read. For all of the reasons that are on display here: an ability to honor the stillness of a moment -- to zoom in and pick apart all of its movements …. It is refreshing, to return to his work once again, and be as in awe as I always have been.”

—Hanif Abdurraqib

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