"Still, Madman"
By Matt Smythe
I know how to speak
to the living and the dead.
A lost language
that falls from my lips
like the second nature of a child
reaching for a flame.
Dangerous conversations
exposing the nature of hopelessness
A need to feel something,
like hands in the belly
of a body in a hospital morgue
exposing inertia’s last call.
It’s a wonder we exist at all.
The living should be able to handle themselves
The dead look nothing like I was taught.
Matt Smythe hails from the Finger Lakes region of western New York. An Army veteran and lifelong outdoorsman, Matt suffers from an inability to sit still. If he’s not in the woods, or on the water, he’s scheming ways to get there. His work has appeared in Free Range American, Gray’s Sporting Journal, the Fly Fish Journal, The Drake, Southern Culture on the Fly, Revive, Midcurrent, TROUT Magazine, and a handful of other non-outdoors-related magazines and literary journals. He recently published a book of poetry with Dead Reckoning Collective titled Revision of a Man, where this poem was originally published.
What’s happening at VetRep…
Catch our interview with Playwright David Stamps on the Savage Wonder Podcast this week.
Registration is live for our first acting and playwriting classes! The classes are being offered at our Quaker Ave. location on February 22nd and March 4th. Find more details and register here.
VetRep is hosting our second public workshop, this time for War Wound by Philip Korth. We’re proud to hold this event at American Legion Post 633 in Highland Falls, NY which is our sponsor for the reading. Get tickets here!