Miles Matis-Uzzo
Anubis Nettle Nightflower
Black-cinnabar-soil
you dig desperately
with tongue
to taste the other side
How unfair it must feel
that I compare your life
to a feather
but this feather
has lived many lives
my dear
in-flight
closer to heaven
than you will ever be
Your deer is car-struck
Howl
with blood-moon-teeth
bury them
in your muck
your murkiness
It smells like organs in amber
animalic
these jackals swarm for collection
Copper Meat
notes of:
Honeysuckle
Opium
Fennel
Lungs
Times
Dripping canines
doggy catacombs
You entangle in
the web
of my mouth
in pearly drops
Saliva-string
leg-spun
silk soul collection
I roam black-cinnabar-soil
unsatiated
by your emptiness
––––
Night Wound
I roll on my back
to see
a dimpled ceiling,
dust floating,
cockroach crawling,
across the swollen plains
of my quenchless longing
The cockroach tells me something
I get closer
It whispers
“There is no love here”
My sympathetic limb
wags
––––
Morning Ceiling Leak
I don’t think of you anymore
where the pink stain remains
The fruit was too ripe
unsafe in my softness
you reached my pit
Your journey ended there
but the pink stain remained
Where I lose my
teeth for the second time
a pink stain remains
I think about my friend's you
who punched out
windshield’s teeth
Glass embedded
bloodied knuckles
like jewels
Tiny pink stains on
beige faux suede
Look at the drunk
pink stain
Its fuzzy-embarrassing edges
spread across a linoleum counter
like a virus
The virus turns grief
into a lake
into a leak
Again into the pink stain
that feeds the ever present
bloated ceiling
––––
Miles Matis-Uzzo is an artist and poet who lives and works in Austin, Texas. They are the author of the chapbook Dog Custody (Bottlecap Press, 2026).