The Glacier
Issue One
Fall 2022

All the Young Dudes

This dude at the bagel store said Nice shirt.
And he was a dude. Some manly partner with a little sensitive streak of pink hair

in his brown locks that he never dyed pink
but you know it’s there when he says, Nice shirt.

I said, It’s really old, pointing to holes at the neck line.
No, he said, it’s a good shirt,

and I knew what he meant, what dudes mean about old, worn, beat the shit out of cotton shirts
that wear like skin.

So, I fist pumped him in my mind, put on my own dude voice and said,
We gotta stick together us dudes,

in my mind, too, because deep down I have no real dudeness of my own
to call myself the big man, the habanero cowboy, Mr. I Got This Man.

And happy, I left the bagel store, got on my magic carpet and floated over West Roxbury
wondering on our encounter,

wondering if he were talking about the holes or the writing on the shirt, Party With A Purpose,
and on the back, Everyone has a reason to dance,

because everyone does, even when death and failure are right around the corner,
or hysterical Mario Kart characters like Luigi and Peach

burning on fire in the back of your brain
unable to let you sleep into the bowels of the world’s anxiety.

Everyone has a reason to boogie ugie ugie no matter the ring tone
and I wondered if he knew that the shirt was a celebration of a benefit dance

for Boston Children’s Hospital but it could be any children’s hospital
where all the children have tubes in their arms

and oxygen masks on their cheeks. And if he did, sitting there waiting for his coffee,
then he was really a dude,

a big man,
a beating heart with tight muscles and some serious blue eyes.

So, I parked my carpet outside of the YMCA and walked back down to the bagel store
and there he was, waiting for his bagel, still, and I said,

You know it’s for the kids, the shirt, right?
and he grabbed my hand, twirled me around, dipped me twice,

and sashayed me down the street,
the way all the young dudes carry the news of the world in their back pocket

so, just at the right moment, they can reach out, pick you up,
and carry you across the threshold.

Dogdays

No matter how many times you walk the dog 
you don’t want to walk the dog. 
You want to open the door and let it run up and down South Street, 
in and out of caves, down mountains and through subway tunnels. 
You want nothing to do with its urine and good will.
You couldn’t care less if it got hit by a tractor out to do a slow burn in the field. 
It’s not that you are a man with no heart. It’s not 
that you can’t open the compassion furnace in your breastplate.
It’s just that you are careless and careless may be a cop out
for something darker, 
an abyss. 
You fell in it once, in your early 20s, and never thought that the ropes of love, 
the spindle of someone’s touch, 
the thread of a friend’s dark coat, could get you out. 
But, it did. 
And now you are here again 
and the dog has to pee and shit and eat rabbits and sticks 
and you can’t muster the fortitude of a thousand tangerines 
to take it for a walk. 
It’s dark out 
and the snow is coming 
and the subway tunnels will fill up with rats and old songs, 
like the ones you sang when you were a kid 
about circles and miners, and you think, damn, 
just let her out. Go with her. 
Don’t even put on a coat, shoes, mittens. 
Just walk into the darkness and see where it takes you. 
But then she barks at the ghosts in her dog vision
and you think, How many times does one have to go into the darkness 
to know the darkness? 
How many angels are in there anyway 
to soften the heart? 
You don’t have a choice. 
Who does? 
So, you put the leash on the beast, boots on your feet, 
rat spray in your pocket, 
and you’re off. Oh my God, you are gone 
to meet them, the angels, 
in all their halo spitshine,
flapping their rust-colored wings.

MATTHEW LIPPMAN‘s collection Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful (2020) is published by Four Way Books. It was the recipient of the 2018 Levis Prize. His next collection, We Are Sleeping With Our Sneakers On, will be published by Four Way Books in 2024.

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