Matthew Schultz
One-Room Schoolhouse
tumult upon the sofa, cairns
of variegated textbooks
and frayed flashcards,
perfunctory interlocutors
stacked upon the coffee table
where colored pencils skeeter
through the gloaming.
Out there, a disease
ravaged frontier organized
by increments of grave depth
marks our passage with
extravagant rallentando.
We worship soupçon silence––
a small, ephemeral pox upon
the prevailing cacophony.
From my desk, pressed against the
westward wall furthest from bedlam
but nearest the window where
our flatulent dog heralds
trespassers with the audacity to
traverse his stretch of sidewalk,
I brace for the bleating of childhood
boredom, insidious as Manifest Destiny.
—Submitted on 10/31/2020 to the erstwhile What Rough Beast series
Matthew Schultz is the author of the novels On Coventry (Harvard Square Editions, 2015) and We, The Wanted (Cosmic Egg Books, 2021). His poems have appeared in Thrush and Eunoia Review. Schultz’s essays on Irish literary history have appeared in Irish Studies Review, James Joyce Quarterly, Postcolonial Text, and Literature & Aesthetics. He holds a BA and an MA in English from John Carroll University in Ohio, and a PhD in literature from Saint Louis University. Schultz lives in the Hudson Valley and directs the writing center at Vassar College.
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