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Origami Microchaps
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Poems
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| Wunderkammer |
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Click title to download PDF
Cover: From Villa & Rose
Mini Artworks on Pinterest
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Courting Eagles
A pair of bald eagles yin & yang
the early evening blue, a cluster
of clouds heaping the background
behind the doubled-over daub
of a half winking moon. They spiral
like two excited galaxies, never
colliding, just courting, rising,
blurring into the hint of heavens.
Pine Eagle
I saw you, white wave constellation
rising above the Deschutes river,
chasing out a crow from your current.
I sat by a Milk Way of runed rocks
and the upturned ocean of the sky,
and you spilled upstream, rapid
and uneven, as if debating ownership
with the river, orbiting pine trees to
prove to Odin that you can see all.
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The Bat
When asked to explain what a poem is, I say
a bat
that most successful of all mammals,
drawing up the string of the evening
circumferencing the douglas fir’s column
that reaches right up to that first star
blamed
for disease and world plague
a metaphor for who we are.
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Matthew James Friday © 2024
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| River Songs |
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Click title to download PDF
Cover photo: ‘River View’ by author
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4 Otters in the Metolius River
Out of the water they snap,
four glistening ligaments
contracting a fallen trunk.
Back into the water they crash
and undulate upstream, up
the arm of the river, resurfacing
a remembrance of muscles,
constricting in questions
answered further upstream.
The riverbank always beckons
otter again. Otter too easy
a word for one so aligned
with the current, the earth-
brown body of the world,
the giggles of children.
Deschutes’ Circles
An osprey curves up to its nest,
fish fixed in a flapping grimace.
Chicks cry out with oval hunger.
At the river bandstand older adults
sit in a fenced-off oh discussing April’s
aches around an open box of donuts.
On the picnic lawn canada geese bob
heads and hiss to warn the walkers
away from the easter-yellow gifts.
On the arching Old Mill footbridge
flags the color of an invaded nation
flap and flank in a violent wind.
The river’s wisdom bends it, breaks
it around rocks, mends with curling
currents and the ocean’s distant O.
The River Reclaimed
The geese have reclaimed their river.
They hold court on their current,
gathered in hundreds, mimicking
the summer floats that crowded
their water with that bloated sense
of ownership, drinks and indifference
to the river’s true purpose. Tourists
a long diluted rumor, leaving geese
to feed, upturned white exclamations
stating the points of reclamation.
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The Whirlpool
Held in the vertex of two fixed points
a marriage finger-long whirlpool spins
on an axis made of flux and micro
-currents cut and bled by stony grins.
Constantly changing, tugged by tides
that tear galaxies from rotating points.
Shrinking and growing, a tiny black
hole of indecision that suddenly hides,
consuming itself, now spooling anew
or two passing twigs sharing a cause,
locked in a dance undulating spirals
as if the river was crafting metaphors
of how life works, how my soul clings
to a spinning body of water and wind.
Silver Falls
Perhaps it’s all the water pounding
rock that predates primates, torn
curtains of streaming calm, trees
woolled in luminous, languid moss,
everything affected yet connected,
spoken in tongues of river and bark.
Conversation with my brother-in-law
about Creationism, science, evidence,
all the magic offered in mundane,
God’s shifting seat around the table.
The waterfalls tell the truth of the gift
given unequally, the slight of hand.
When you realize, it is already gone,
words of an almost remembered song.
On Hearing ‘River Snow’ by Liu Zongyuan
recited in Chinese
Grade 4 faces look up at me. International school
in China. Too many poems to choose from.
All human traces. On Zoom, collar shirt,
beard - middle aged man. Not alone.
Dangling poems in the keen river. Smiles.
Then the Chinese teacher starts a recital of the
‘River Snow’ by Liu Zongyuan, to rudder the
students’ recall of shared knowledge. Instantly,
they serenade in Chinese. For a few seconds I am
with the river snow, the climbable mountain,
knowledge we are not alone.
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Matthew James Friday © 2023
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| The Residents |
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Click title to download PDF
Cover collage by Jan Keough
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Against the Current
The red tailed hawk flies a tugged line
over the pines that rig the riverside,
along a taste of cracked toffee rocks.
Oddly slow, the hawk, as if fighting a tide.
Puppet wings but the strings are invisible.
Behind the river groans. There’s a plan
to build 250 homes against the cliffs,
trees to be cleared, paths suffocated,
the hawk’s clawed opinions ignored.
Devotee on the Deschutes
Here is poetry, Apollo winks,
on a warm March afternoon
the constant river shredded
by rocks into a silk archipelago,
shimmering in sunlit stillness,
the music of immovable motion
shattered by a retriever wrecking
the river, threatening to shake
itself by me. Poetry paddles
away from another dog’s soiling
bark and the empty commands
of owners. Apollo is laughing.
You are no Epsom Orpheus,
just a devotee on the Deschutes.
Easter Monday Circles
Over the Deschutes river near the Old
Mill, hundreds of tree swallows gather,
celebrating water and sun and chance
in endless tightening circles, part-panic,
part ballet. Above them circles a single
bald eagle, rising higher and heavenly,
wings written with feathered prayers,
to become spotted obscurity in blue,
angel to the waxing Moon smudging
the morning with its blink, taking turns
to encircle the hope. The eagle merges
with the moon, the swallows disperse,
and the river conducts the resurrection
song of sun and water and chance.
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Just Hunger
I run down to the sloping, sandy
yellow field, bumped by blackened
heaps of old snow. Here a swainson
hawk patrols, marking ley-lines with
sharp eyes, then watching them tremble
from atop a roadside telegraph pole.
Something new today: the shrubs
torn up and the frosted field marked
with little orange survey flags. His plot
bordered by a growing forest of blocks
and backyards: White Salmon town
spawning. Does he understand that
he has lost the land of his ancestors,
no recompense or apology, just hunger.
Remains of Redwood
Near the storm tossed tantrum
of trunks and bleached branches
that moustache the beach’s upper lip
there grins a vast ghost-white base
between two huge rocks, confused
for a rock or a rejected coral reel.
But this is the core of a long vanished
mammoth swept down from California
by some infernal tempest, torn apart
and thrown fossilized onto the beach
long before there was Bandon, OR,
the forgetfulness of the white folk,
the settlers and the loggers robbing
the coast of its space and emptiness.
The Impossible Resident
Just when you thought you knew all their tricks.
An Anna’s Hummingbird appears
outside the patio doors. It’s winter
in White Salmon. The Columbia’s clouds
disgorge over the rounded hills.
Everything is damp, empty, still except
for this tiny buzz of disbelief
searching all the doorsteps, gardens,
frosted feeders for food enough
to last until spring. This impossible resident
cajoling just enough calories.
Should snow spoil her search, she will take
to her tree post, hidden by bark
and tremble herself into torpor, heart slowed
while cosy relatives frolick south.
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Matthew James Friday © 2021
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| 23.5 Degrees |
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover collage by JanK
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Author’s Note -
The title ‘23.5 Degrees’ refers to the
tilt of the Earth's access: a tilt borne of violence
but also luck as this leaning, this imperfection,
gives us our seasons and all the gifts
and challenges that come with us.
- Matthew James Friday, 2019
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Orion Over the Tirol
A rare break from the clot of cloud tonight.
I watch the waxing Gibbous moon rise
and feel roundly called to study the stars,
that much muttered about aspiration.
Orion's belt guides me, and I begin
the education of every hopeful Pharaoh:
locating Orion's legendary body parts:
pulsing Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Regel.
In and out to the balcony many times,
consulting the internet, banging my head
on the window shutters, cursing loudly,
wondering what neighbours make of such a
slow student. Still more to learn: tonight
the Winter Circle, a huge hexagonal asterism,
known to ancients without ipads or airbnb.
I map out the hexagon, afraid of falling
off the balcony, laying flat on cold stone slabs.
Discoveries from legend: Castor and Pollux,
then the brightest of twinkling twin stars
yapping in yellow winks: Sirius the Dog Star,
barking at the flooding Nile to Egyptians,
the Dog Days of summer to the Greeks,
guide across the Pacific for Polynesian,
Unknown to me, mistaken as a planet.
I thank Orion for starting something
begun as a curious boy but forgotten,
scattered through adulthood of alternatives,
resurrected with sore head and wonderment.
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Dust
If we are just dust
hovering in the light
lit up by a splutter
of energy, enough
to claw some crude
shapes, form dreams
of better shapes,
making better dreams;
making every art,
achievement, agony:
agonising over instances
of what was, is, will be
long after the dust has
settled, sloughed. Then
what precious dust
we are, how carefully
we must hold each other,
never spilling a grain.
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DNA Destiny
I reach out in bed, press
fingers into your shoulder,
my thin glove of flesh
and bones becoming fused
with the felt of your existence,
feeling that skeletal future
but asking that the magic
of carbon atoms amassed
from the decay of some
other organic miracle,
a DNA destiny shaped
by flint, fire, endless
immigration through eons
of evolution to end up
as me in a bed with you
asleep, unaware; asking
the magic to stay forever,
defy the deafening darkness.
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Trickster Time
We are a few moments of time
loaned by the Great Trickster
from the Big Bang bag
for us to use, abuse, amuse
Him or Her as best we can.
An almost invisible thread
in the tapestry of billions of years.
We unravel through countless
errors, regrets, greying hair,
fated to the same ending.
Delay just an illusion, a gift.
We are all children tiptoeing
downstairs on Christmas day
to find the Great Trickster
welcoming us back to nothing.
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Together
Elderly couple waddling
down the evening street.
Holding each other close:
his white stick tapping,
her eyes half opened, flickering.
No leader, just together.
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Matthew James Friday © 2019
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| The Words Unsaid |
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover collage by Jan Keough
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Tin Cup Letter Love
Unable to speak the words
I l-o-v-e y-o-u-
Mum spelt it out using
plastic letters from a tin cup.
She taught me to read at
our kitchen table in Norwich
months before the big move
south and starting school.
One by one, I lucky dipped
brightly coloured phonemes,
chewy sounds in my mouth.
I learned the tastes quickly
and my appetite grew. Words,
sentences, pages, whole books.
By the time I started school
I was insatiable, the tin cup
overflowing with enthusiasm.
A lover of reading, Mum
started me with the second-best
replacement to spoken affection.
Years on, still searching in books,
I understand Mum’s spelling
difficulties: post-War parents
who fumbled parental sentences.
the key words of life self-taught.
I wish I could return to happy
kitchen days before school with
Mum and her tin cup of love.
Tea and Biscuits
The day started with Radio 4:
the UK Theme bouncing through
history, pomp, myths, naval jaunts;
then the Shipping Forecast deluding
me into dreaming I could float off
somewhere other than school. Mum
served her motherhood: a cup of tea
and two biscuits, usually digestives,
my favourite, slightly soppy when wet.
Rich Tea biscuits if supplies were low.
Crunchie Creams at the weekend.
The real treat was sitting with me
while I soggily surfaced to face the facts:
walk to school, few friends, grow older
leave school, home, Mum. Every day
for years she arrived, sat by my bedside.
Not much to say, nothing new, sipping
the same tea with me, dunking biscuits.
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Dad Went Out
When he heard his mother had died,
Dad went out
for a walk across the Common.
Alone. He never went out alone.
I may be some time, left unsaid
by the crunch of the closing door.
My brother and I sat stunned
by our Captain’s private grief,
afraid he would not come back
from the cold, unsure what to say
when he did, the British family of few
words and polar denial. We imagined
him walking alone, bitten by those final
decaying hospital bed memories,
trudging through the mud-filled meadows,
dripping trees, birds quietened, deer
hidden. I suspected fury and wailing:
curses and tears for Old Gods,
his mind whitening with acceptance.
Our Oates came back dry, tears tidied
away, the farewell to his mother packed
up with only oak and silver birch as witness.
We sat together quietly on the settee.
Mum made tea and chocolate biscuits.
As Far As She Knows
I keep Mom’s school pencil case
tribute to her best efforts in school.
Her contribution to family legends:
Scoring 1% in a short hand exam.
Pencil case from New Zealand
stacked strips of Kiwi timbers:
kahikatea, rimu, matai, totara, pukatea,
kauri, and rewarewa sovereign. Each
name a caramel chew of vowels,
deepening orange to chocolate,
brown sinewy, one speckled stone,
the last darkly regal zebra brands.
Post-war case measures in inches,
hinges open at one end with a creak,
apologizing for offering two tubular
slits, room only for writing tokens.
Mum remembers splinters of life:
Pencil case her daily companion
in Cheam County Secondary School.
Her name and F16 scratched on the back.
She’s forgotten what F16 means.
As far as she knows, the case
is from Great Aunt Vera, 1950’s émigré,
unmarried Auckland Post Office worker
for over twenty-two years. 1992
the last mention in my grandmother’s
photo books, the family encyclopaedia.
Then forgotten, nothing left to write.
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Matthew James Friday © 2019
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| Waters of Oregon |
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover collage by Jan Keough
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Tamanawas
For Chinook people,
Tamanawas is a helpful spirit guardian.
For two hours we tip-toe
towards the waterfall, fine-footing
through roots of century old Douglas Firs
raveling around rocks, thousands of years
still since they were spewed out
of Mount Hood's magma mouth,
first opening half a million years ago.
We clamber over a recent rock slide
reminding us briefly witnessing apes
that even ancient elements move.
The voice now is pounding water,
recycled molecules millions of years older
boring deeper into the rock, the misty
froth spills around us. We take pictures,
return to the car, the sun slipping
June rays between dense trees
As it has since there were trees
and the sun billions of years ago.
Driving back unaware of fate, I ask
What that flashing yield 4-way junction
sign means. A white truck edges out,
doesn't stop. In a second we are shouting,
screaming, veering into the other lane
of traffic. Thank the Chinook god,
Tamamnwas is with us waving a water
wand. No oncoming traffic. We skid
to a stop in a gas station, panting, hearts
beating, the truck shrinking away.
Three seconds and we’re saved.
The Rain at Night
Rain patting down the heavy sheets of night,
morse code messages interrupting sleep,
tiny womb-beats gurgling peacefully
so that I'm delighted to be awake, to drift
back to the before-birth darkness we die into.
Shored up in places of plywood and concrete
it’s easy to find falling water pleasurable,
to think that this is an ancient melody
of childhood chatter and drips of dreams,
a free meditative muttering from lost gods.
But perhaps our ancestors, shivering in caves
or cramped up behind smoky walls
of sloppily daubed mud, hated the damp
music, cursed the tinkering sky deities,
praying for the morning, sun, dryness.
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The Singing Sea at Florence, OR
No one is with us. No one
is playing that instrument,
a hollowed bone horn? No,
the salty wind humming
air over strings of stone,
thousands of tons of sea
defense boulders hauled
in place by bored soldiers.
On the abandoned beach
beside us the litter of noisy
nights when wind drummed
hard, waving trunks bleached
bone grey; jumbled graveyard,
of broken limbs, weathered
husks. The haunting humming
goes on, the sea listening
to its existence echoing
inside discarded seashells.
A song of salt wind and sand
washed percussion; needing
no audience, no applause.
Hearing the Sea at Pacific City, OR
It is not until we are leaving,
cars bulging, backs turning,
goodbyes rolling behind eyes,
that I hear the sea growling
from over grass toped dunes
higher than the sandy houses,
a barrier from the water, wind
but not the long-feared tsunami
brewing in faults. Such roaring
I fear it really is the tsunami
catching us after days denying
geology tells the same time.
No, this is the constant churning
groan of that wind-licked sea
wanting to be heard over
our prayers for safe travels,
rushed predictions for reunions.
Louder as it hurries over dunes
to wave us away, wish us back,
dissolving footprints in the sand.
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Matthew James Friday © 2018
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All the Ways to Love
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover: Fantasy Kimono by Lauri Burke
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Smiles Out of Kernels
Buying sugared almonds from a stall
at Náměstí Republiky in Prague,
my wife effortlessly unshells
the salesman’s story, cracking up
because he’s from Ah Venezia!
Born in Naples, worked in Venice,
then north, north to Sweden, now
Prague, London next. Selling nuts
here to tourists shivering in Autumn’s
early encasing. Vague on the details:
the visas, the truth of drifting, serving
tourists barely grateful for just a few
snatching seconds. At least my wife
asks questions to crack the monotony,
and get smiles out of kernels.
Just Lost Children
Two days after Christmas and the cheer has left
the driver of Bus 35 from Downtown, Portland.
Two young Japanese tourists tenderized into inaction
by the driver's beating insistence, voice rising,
repetition the only strategy. Your app is wrong.
It's wrong. Ladies, listen. It's w-r-o-n-g! Passengers
laugh in shared shock, Rosa Parks rising
to offer her seat, but only my wife Jill helps,
bridging the gap of a tiny percent of genetics
that justified internment camps, atomic revenge.
Jill acts as intermediate, speaking no Japanese,
offering a kind voice, enthusiasm, the fairy magic
the softens monsters and makes heroes
out of hermits.
Problem suddenly fixed, the journey continues,
the two Japanese students thankful in high pitched
delighted voices of children, just lost children.
The Journey We Cannot Join
We met in the city park in May
on her great grandson’s first birthday.
She spoke a few nodding words of English,
us no Danish, but she added more
with handshake, smiles. Half an hour
later we parted like long lost family:
many handshakes, a little more English,
hugs, tears rolling down her cheeks,
with her stammering words, she said
she loved meeting us, really loved.
She knows she won’t see us again,
not as herself, with this greying clarity.
Her mind will have travelled by then.
Already she is confused about Alaska.
Are we going with her? She is going
on the journey we cannot join.
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Speaking in Hands
Every time I leave home
the words love you tie up
her tongue. So instead
my mother speaks with hands.
She stands in her bedroom
window, watching me walk
down Bramble Walk road,
and she waves. I look back,
see her blurring form between
the curtains, a ghostly hand
fluttering, and I wave back
all the way to the bottom of the road.
Every time we separate for school
for work, for holidays, for another
country and not returning
for years, I look back and there
she is waving, waving until
tall meadow grasses, old elm trees,
the bend in the road breaks
our bond. Still, she is waving,
a strangely shy little songbird,
her hands speaking more
than her mouth can manage.
All the Things I never Was, NO 1: Footballer
I have Daniel Rice to thank
for not becoming a footballer.
With his ball-round head, hair
cut short and bullish body he used
to barge me off the ball. We met
next to Stamford Green Pond
and he tricked me with a message:
you didn’t make the training team,
sorry stabbed on the end, eyes lowered.
I turned back and headed home,
my every-boy dream killed before
it could run. I had some talents:
running backwards on my toes, kicking
accurately with both feet, fast burst
of speed and good passing skills.
I thought I had at least done
enough to make the B Team.
Daniel Rice turned, ran back home,
the same direction as Court Recreation
Park and the Epsom Eagles team.
I never doubted him until weeks later
I heard that my name had been read
out but there was no answer. So Friday
was crossed out for good, just like our
friendship. But really I owe him
thanks for playing with words instead.
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Matthew James Friday © 2017
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Matthew James Friday is a British born writer and teacher. He has had many poems published in US and international journals. His first chapbook ‘The Residents’ is due to be published by Finishing Line Press in summer 2024. He has published numerous micro-chapbooks with the Origami Poems Project. Poems are forthcoming in The Potomac Review, Weber - The Contemporary West Review and The Amsterdam Quarterly (NL). Matthew is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet. Visit his website at http://matthewfriday.weebly.com