Super Mario fan art by http://superlakitu.deviantart.com/
MATTHEW OLZMANN
Letter To Super Mario
(after Amorak Huey)
In your country, dear Mario, the sky is so blue, the clouds
so still, it's as if we haven't leveled
the mountains or poisoned the oceans yet.
It's 1986 and money is everywhere.
Coins float in the air
and flowers glow like radiation.
From here, I can see myself back then: the world
is young and wholesome as Styrofoam.
Madonna opens her heart to me
inside the speakers of every boombox.
Your world is one with no tornado warnings,
no fires that start in the kitchen and rip
through the wainscot paneling.
Your best friend's parents are still married and alive,
and the kid down the road is never shown
an unusual spot on a scan of his spinal cord.
You live by two rules: keep running,
and stomp on everything that moves.
But look how the Earth tries to take back
all the ground we've stolen.
What kind of vines crawl up from those drainage pipes?
Do they have mouths? Will they swallow you whole?
It's okay. If the rage won't end.
If you leap into the air to punch a brick wall
with your bare hands, the bricks will break.
Your hands will forgive you.
Letter To Super Mario
(after Amorak Huey)
In your country, dear Mario, the sky is so blue, the clouds
so still, it's as if we haven't leveled
the mountains or poisoned the oceans yet.
It's 1986 and money is everywhere.
Coins float in the air
and flowers glow like radiation.
From here, I can see myself back then: the world
is young and wholesome as Styrofoam.
Madonna opens her heart to me
inside the speakers of every boombox.
Your world is one with no tornado warnings,
no fires that start in the kitchen and rip
through the wainscot paneling.
Your best friend's parents are still married and alive,
and the kid down the road is never shown
an unusual spot on a scan of his spinal cord.
You live by two rules: keep running,
and stomp on everything that moves.
But look how the Earth tries to take back
all the ground we've stolen.
What kind of vines crawl up from those drainage pipes?
Do they have mouths? Will they swallow you whole?
It's okay. If the rage won't end.
If you leap into the air to punch a brick wall
with your bare hands, the bricks will break.
Your hands will forgive you.
Matthew Olzmann’s first book of poems, Mezzanines, received the 2011 Kundiman Prize and was published by Alice James Books. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, Forklift, Ohio and elsewhere. Currently, he is a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in the undergraduate writing program at Warren Wilson College. (matthewolzmann.com)
