Morgan Matchuny

Rawhead: Point Blank — Featured Poet
January 2026

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To Angels I Know and Angels I Don’t

dear angels in doorways angels on benches angels with needles angels with 
dogs angels with cardboard kingdoms angels with throats full of songs no one paid to hear angels I know and angels I don’t they want you scraped from the record cut from the census sterilized like vermin killed like weeds newsman with his smirk and his television bloodlust says you should be erased says poverty is genetic says your womb is a crime says your body is a threat and I say no I say 
fuck that I say you are prophets you are the last truth-tellers in this rotting 
empire you are scripture written in piss and graffiti you are holy even when the cops shove you down holy even when the mayor deems you nuisance holy even when the church locks its doors and hands out sermons instead of soup I remember the floor I slept on the teeth I sold the ghosts I kissed for a dollar I remember how it felt to be debris I remember and I will not forget you I will not quicken my step I will not call you blight I will not let them erase you angels 
you are fire you are riot you are contagion you are proof this country is sick 
you are the diagnosis you are the cure I love you in the language of broken glass
I love you in the dialect of hunger I love you louder than their ordinances I love you sharper than their scalpels angels rise up angels it’s time angels howl angels 
spit in their clean faces angels survive and survive and survive

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On a Porch Haint Blue an Eye-spotted Butterfly

watches me from the ceiling corner,
its wings dulling in porch-light,
dust for armor.

I close my eyes,
paint my own spots
with dollar store liner—cheap war paint,
the kind that burns when you sweat.

you laugh from your chair,
Old Milwaukee bleeding cold rings
into the wood. smoke drifts
like you’re praying.

you always said
I was too fast for catching,
too mouthy for keeping.

but I’ve learned what hides me best
isn’t silence—
it’s shine.

so I give myself new eyes,
big and fake,
mean-looking enough to pass
for something untouchable.

you reach—
I flinch once,
then don’t.

I’ve got scales now,
thin as lies,
but harder.

and I’m more predator
than anyone
who ever tried to hunt me.

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What They Tell You

freedom is clocking out,
the long walk to the car,
imagining a route
you’ll never take.
freedom to pick a new alarm sound—
loathed by Friday.

freedom is paper or plastic,
the capitalist liturgy:
serums for sins you never committed.
freedom to post your worst opinions,
to drive on the right side of the road
forever, amen.

freedom at the ice cream shop
with its wall of flavors,
all that freedom melting down your wrist.
freedom is choosing what happens to your body—

wait.
i’m sorry.
that selection is unavailable.
please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed.

for bodily autonomy, please hold.
your wait time is…incalculable.
your call is…very important to us.

static.
silence.

freedom is the doctor’s door
that will not open.
freedom is the courthouse bench
that never warms beneath you.
freedom is the hand on your shoulder
telling you what you meant to choose.

freedom is the room
you enter alone, leave rearranged.
freedom is the story you tell
that they rename.
freedom is the body you live in
until someone else claims it.

please make another selection.
please speak clearly.
please stop crying.
please understand:
this is for your protection.

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At 18 Months Clean I Learned the Truth About Vultures

sometimes i think about that time of my life—
alone on a tattered mattress, stain shaped like Jesus,
nothing but televangelists to keep me company.
have you repented today? too busy hallucinating classic rock,
fishing into lakes in the recesses of my mind;
the fish are all dead and rotten. i eat them anyway,
the belly so empty i get sick from a single sip.
i fight my fatty liver. it’s simple:
you just get numb.

at eighteen months clean i learned the truth about vultures—
they do not circle the dead, they find the rising currents
and ride them. masters of bricolage.
i picture that me being lifted
into my own arms here, now, a horaltic pose,
vultures dancing in synchrony, singing
not of repentance but acceptance:
the future’s uncertain and the end is always near.

i would tell her about the pain that will come,
the eyes that know even when they do not know.
i would hold that frightened girl—one-oh-five pounds
of shame—brush her severed hair, bleached
toward some angelic embodiment in the din
of drug-induced psychosis and The Loneliness:
this is for all the lonely people, thinkin’ life has passed them by.

i would keep her in a locket on a red string like Rahab,
round my neck where the pulse hits,
to remind her she is alive—more alive now
than when the blood pulled back into the syringe.
Burroughs called it the Chinese flower;
i call it pesticide in a pen.
quit the needle. quit the spoon. quit the trip to the moon.

she is one with me; our artistry yields many images.
there is one i could paint a thousand times,
even on my worst day sober: gilded lily, broken glass,
the mouth just after saying—no more. leave me alone.
and still, above us, the warm air lifts.

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And Still

i dream of clean sheets
like they’re holy relics,
still pray to the god of withdrawal
who wears my face backwards,
who says you’ve already been saved
and means you’ve already been stripped.

the mirror doesn’t lie,
it evangelizes.
it says: this is your kingdom,
this flesh your pulpit,
these scars your psalms.

i build altars out of pill bottles,
confess to the faucet,
wash my sins in industrial light.
every hum of the radiator
a choir, every drip
a heartbeat on borrowed time.

when i speak now
it’s in the language of relapse and resurrection,
in tongues shaped by hunger
and the quiet violence of survival.

i no longer ask to be forgiven.
i ask to be seen
as the animal that learned to stand upright,
to mouth the words i’m still here
and mean them like scripture.

and if there is power left in me
let it be raw and unbeautiful,
let it crawl from the wound
and name itself worthy.

because i have learned
that even the broken body
is a temple with its lights still on,
a hum still running
beneath the ruin,
whispering—
watch how i keep living.

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