Page 1: Cover Page

Visual Description:

• A black-and-white photograph of poet Matt McBride speaking at a microphone. He wears a dark shirt and holds a book in his left hand while his right hand touches his chest.
• The background features an off-white wall, a power outlet, and a mounted microphone stand.
• Overlaying the image in large, bold, white capital letters is the name “MATT McBRIDE” spread across the lower part of the photo.

Page 2: Background Texture Page

Visual Description:

• A dark gray-blue textured background resembling aged paper or grainy fabric.
• This page (as several of the even numbered pages in this flipbook) is decorative with no text or images beyond the texture and serves to place focus on the poem on the next page.

Page 3: Table of Contents

Text:

• TABLE OF CONTENTS (white, uppercase letters on a dark gray background)
• Below, a yellow rectangle lists the section titles in black text:
  • 01 Inside Every Bird 02 Untitled 03 The God of Loneliness 04 From The Mourners Forget Which Funeral They Are At 05 From Prerecorded Weather 06 City of the Petty 07 Acarapis Woodi 08 Three Poems (From “The Party”)09 From “The Party”10 Supplement of Irresistibles
  • 11 Bibliography

Page 4: Abstract Scratch Design

Visual Description:

• A minimalist abstract design consisting of black ink-like scratches, lines, and marks against a light gray background.
• The text at the bottom reads:
  From City of Incandescent Light (63)

Page 5: Inside Every Bird

Text (Poem):

Inside every bird
is a penny

with a silhouette
of your father as an infant.

.
The light caught in photographs.
The silence particular to elevators.

Everything
is only a part of itself.

Visual Description:

• Minimalist design with black text on a light gray background.
• The poem title is in a bold, modern sans-serif font, aligned to the left.
• A large black rectangle in the top right corner contains the number “.01” in white.
• Illustration: A solid black silhouette of a bird perched on a round object, positioned in the lower right corner.

Page 6: Balloon & Cloud Illustration

Visual Description:

• A pale green gradient background resembling a sky.
• A single white balloon floats in the bottom left corner, tethered to a thin string.
• Below the balloon, soft, mist-like clouds stretch across the lower part of the image.

Page 7: Untitled

Text (Poem):

The piano sounds like rain
inside the crystal ballroom.

A dial tone of violins,
crystal too,
with their sin of strings
pulled from the bellies of lambs.

Our tongues all rowboats
without oars.

Our shadows untether.

And the moon is rolled out
of its great stable.

And the fields are a run
of freshly made beds.

What’s it like to be alone?
We liken it to a balloon.

(The last two lines reference Valerie June’s cover of “Cosmic Dancer”)

Visual Description:

• Vintage television illustration at the top of the page, displaying a black-and-white video still of couples dancing in a ballroom.
• The television screen has a YouTube play button overlay, signaling an embedded video link.
• The poem’s title, “Untitled”, is in bold, purple sans-serif font with an underline.
• The text is left-aligned on a light gray background, with .02 displayed in purple in the top right.

Page 8: Solid Blue Background

Visual Description:

• A deep, muted blue color fills the entire page.
• No text, images, or additional elements.

Page 9: The God of Loneliness

Text (Poem):

In a wood-paneled room,
crowded with people
wearing rubber masks of
themselves,

naked except for pantyhose,
I sit at a metal desk.

My prayer is the chirping
of a fire alarm
whose battery is dying.

On an electric typewriter,
I start a poem with the line

There is no fish
stranger than the human heart,

meaning: I am the Object’s object.

Visual Description:

• The background is a muted teal blue, split into a darker and lighter section.
• The poem’s title, “The God of Loneliness,” is in yellow uppercase letters.
• A large, futuristic fish illustration dominates the right side of the page.
  • The fish has a mechanical, cybernetic design with metal plating, glowing circuitry, and hollow eye sockets.
  • It appears part-organic, part-machine.
  • A caption on the right reads: “Image created in Canva.”

Page 10: Black Background Page

Visual Description:

• A completely black page with no visible text, images, or design elements.

Page 11: From The Mourners Forget Which Funeral They Are At

Text (Poem):

Bulbs slid loose from fixtures.
Bricked in front of my door,
pillow sandbags
set against a flood of milk.
The night skies
crowned with astronauts,
and underneath, me
covering myself
with false eyelashes.

In the dream,
I interrupted the autopsies
of every woman I’d slept with,
one after another.
Every day was
its own hospital.
I bruised white
as a peony.

There was senselessness,
collective nouns,
but only one object.
There was the time I spent
not learning piano.
My memories felt like commercials
without products.
Bodies repeated themselves.
I wished
I was in each passing plane.

Every time I got home
all my objects
had been wrapped
in bubble wrap.
Anything spoken
was extra.
I got blurrier close up.
The bedsheets turned
into smoke;
the rain continued an exegesis
on meaninglessness.

Tape yellowed
and became visible.
Shame waved
like migrations of dead birds
inside me.
The TV’s playing yesterday for me.

The bones of small plants.
There were only two people,
and I wasn’t one of them.

Visual Description:

• The background is a grayscale, grainy texture.
• At the top, a row of exposed hanging lightbulbs dangles from cords, emitting a faint glow.
• The text is arranged in three columns, with bold black headings and smaller, uniform text for the poem.
• At the bottom, a blurred, transparent layer of plastic bubble wrap overlays part of the page.

Page 12: Astronauts in Whiskey

Visual Description:

• A textured, speckled blue background resembling a collage or grainy film overlay.
• Floating white and blue clouds hover near the upper left and lower center.
• A large, high-contrast grayscale moon dominates the top right corner, with a yellow outline suggesting a hand-drawn effect.
• The main focal point is a glass of whiskey with two miniature astronauts sitting on ice cubes.
• The astronauts are wearing classic white space suits and facing forward.
• A rotary telephone receiver is also inside the whiskey glass, partially submerged.
• A curved caption at the bottom reads: “An AI-generated image, obviously 😂”

Page 13: Excerpts from Pre-Recorded Weather

Text (Poem):

We are thinking of what
to spray on the boarded up
windows of empty houses

with floating muscles
so recently detached so recently part
of how we face

feeling our dead
blink simultaneously

a skyful of astronauts
colliding like ice in whiskey

sickly coughs on busy streets
music ‘til the very end

everyone
dreaming in captions

(13)

the rest isn’t silence
the rest is cloudburst
we interpret gradually

a phone ringing in past tense
a story inside our heads

where it’s always winter
always muted

where we tie together
whatever shadows shape
after rubbing our eyes

and then anything happens

(29)

Visual Description:

• The page background is soft blue with a vertical striped pattern resembling fabric or textured wallpaper.
• The text is arranged in two columns, separated by a thin line.
• The heading uses a mix of white uppercase letters and bold black serif text.

Page 14: Floating Jellyfish Cluster

Visual Description:

• The background is deep blue, resembling an ocean depth.
• A cluster of delicate, translucent jellyfish drapes downward in a curved formation.
• The jellyfish are soft pinkish-beige with long, intricate tentacles.

Page 15: City of the Petty

Text (Poem):

We are
shawled in bruises
big as jellyfish.

A feeling our skin is too tight.

We watch the surveillance footage
like television.

Doll-sized everything.”

(From City of Incandescent Light (II, 22)

Visual Description:

• A monotone purple background.
• The poem’s title, “City of the Petty,” is in uppercase white letters, evenly spaced.
• The text is centered and justified.
• A small, italicized citation appears in the bottom right corner.

Page 16: Microscopic Mite (Acarapis Woodi) in a Honeybee Trachea

Visual Description:

• A large, detailed close-up of a honeybee trachea, showing multiple microscopic mites inside.
• The trachea is golden brown and textured, resembling tree rings or layers of muscle fiber.
• Text on the image reads: “Mites in honeybee trachea. Image source: Wikipedia.”
• A magnified mite, appearing soft-bodied with small spiny protrusions, is featured in the lower section of the image.

Page 17: Excerpt from Acarapis Woodi

Text (Poem):

Meaning there are spiders
in the soft slinkies
runnelling our bodies.

Breathing makes us susceptible.
They enter the warm pause
of hair-covered atriums,

drink blood from blood-running faucets.
Eyeless, turkey-bodied babies,
arms branching to no hand.

Visual Description:

• A vintage typewriter with honey dripping over the keys.
• A bee is crawling near the typewriter ribbon.
• A single sheet of aged, yellowish paper protrudes from the machine, displaying the poem’s text.
• The background is textured blue with fluffy clouds.
• A red drop of blood drips from the edge of the paper.

Page 18: Surreal Party Collage

Visual Description:

• A chaotic, surreal collage featuring:
  • A large, torn-out human eye with long eyelashes.
  • Two black vinyl records.
  • A paper boat floating among confetti and streamers.
  • A laughing woman in a white fluffy dress, holding up her arms.
  • A black goat’s head emerging from the bottom.
  • Text curves around the central image, reading: “To read more selections from The Party, click this link.”

Page 19: Three Poems

Text (Poem):

We elect whoever
wears the worst wig president,

paint faces on watermelons
for the inauguration.

To hide our lives’ smallnesses,
we build bigger homes. Each day
a new lifestyle channel.

There’s the soft meaninglessness
of clouds, aren’t cotton balls
enough
to stuff the unstuffed space.

And when we run out of confetti,
we’ll use broken glass.

Visual Description:

• A floating orange wig with a faceless, round blue head.
• Large cotton balls lined up on the left.
• Shattered glass pieces flying in the upper left.

Page 20:

Text (Poem):

Poem: On inflatable furniture
we waded a cultural pause.
The wind had hair in it.
The carnival
was erected in a day.
Drunk ballerinas
played Twister® on stage.
When surveyed, we replied
we are good.

•  

People tied mannequins to car
roofs like deer.

I had this good job
sewing eggs together.

I am collecting the stars
in a teacup for Selah.

The wind is a brush
of drunk voices.

In sleep, I walk naked
through a forest of arms.

•  

We used Instagram
to make sure our dreams
were consistent. It was
one big beast fable
with no moral, though
morale was high. We divined
ramen noodles’ cursive.
We couldn’t remember
which yesterday
we missed so much.
Nightly, we’d storm landfills
and dig up our lost toys.

Visual Description:

• A poetry page titled “from THE PARTY” with the number “.09” in the top right.
• The background is textured beige with scattered speckled eggs and a spool of golden thread with a needle.
• The poem is in two columns, with phrases in bold and some in orange text.
• A small illustration of a teacup labeled “Selah” releases a trail of black stars.

Page 21:

Text

Poem: Just Night
Here people feel boneless.
We stare out of windows and
stare into them.

The weather is temperate
and gray birds suture the sky.
We speak only to reiterate,
bleed clean water from faucets.

Our houses exhale dry heat
from vents. Shadows grow
bored of us.
We are ambivalent
about the way the sun constructs
our colors in morning,
the way the moon
coagulates over faces
in evening. Perception

merits no meaning.
The sun augers nothing—
night is just night.

Respite
You can stop walking.
You’ve worn the grass
Threadbare with your pacing.
The pigeons in your ribcage
have no cause
for their fluttering.
Your heart’s fist can slacken.
The stars are firmly moored.
The sun is buoyant
And will not fall.

Visual description:

• A poetry page titled “Supplement of IRRESISTIBLES” with the number “.10” in the top right.
• The subtitle, “From The Space Between Stars, 2013,” is in yellow.
• The background is a textured dark gray, and the text is in two columns.
• The left column, titled “Just Night.”
• The right column, titled “Respite.”
• Stylized white illustrations of birds flying are arranged along the lower right side of the page.

Page 22:

Text (poem)

Poem: Autopsy Proctor
Note the silliness of skin, its pettiness and shame. Thirty minutes
with a cheese grater and you’ll be on to fresher fruit. You’ll need
an electric saw for the church of ribs. See how bone dusts to
cloud. thumb of tongue as well. Save. Afterwards, the
throat would be easy. Observe the bridge of the larynx, how like
a wishbone it was. (6)

Cities of the Future
There are three new colors:
stalb (a toothpaste blue),

apest (a kind of
burnt-teeth-yellow-black),

And mestle
(the color water is now).

Wire coat hangers
ting into each other on tree branches
like wind chimes.

The air smells all hospital.

We have a soap for our blood.
We have LCD screens for our fingernails.
We have people landfills.

We are not uncontent. (37)

Visual description:

• A poetry page titled “From City of Incandescent Light, 2018” with a dark gray background and yellow headers.
• The left-aligned poem is divided into two sections.
• The faint outline of a ribcage-shaped church is visible in the background.

Page 23:

Text:

Poem: *

the problem is
no moment is now

and the ugliness
we sing in favor of

walks through someone
else’s memory

“polyester pants”
is how we say

we want to be forgotten (6)

•  

a kind of real time
disappears behind us

every line of this poem
a trespass against
the grammars of snow

there there we dream
over and over

there there (24)

Visual Description:

• A poetry page titled “From Prerecorded Weather, 2022” with a gray-speckled textured background.
• The text is in two sections, both using a minimalist layout. The first section starts with “the problem is no moment is now.”
• The second section repeats the phrase “there there.” There is a simple text layout with extra space between words.

Page 24

Bibliography Entries:

• Acarapis Woodi ‘Breathing Makes Us Susceptible’ (Guernica, 2020).
• City in Progress (Juked, 2011).
• City of Incandescent Light (Black Lawrence Press, 2018).
• Inside Every Bird (The Offending Adam, 2013).
• The God of Loneliness (The Collidescope, 2024).
• More Selections from The Party (Banyan Review, 2022).
• The Mourners Forget Which Funeral They’re At (Greying Ghost, 2021).
• PreRecorded Weather (2022) (co-authored with Noah Falck, Winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize 2022).
• Selections from The Party (Figure 1, 2022).
• The Space Between Stars (Kent State UP, 2013).
• Three Poems (Action, Spectacle, Summer 2023).
• Untitled (Porlock Poetry: New Poetry Issue 2, 2023).

Visual Description:

A bibliography page titled “BIBLIOGRAPHY” in bold, stylized black text with yellow highlights. The page lists multiple poetry publications. The background has a gray, slightly textured appearance.

Page 25:

Visual Description: A collage-style promotional image featuring four book covers arranged in a slightly tilted manner. The books, all by poet Matt McBride, include The Space Between Stars, The Mourners Forget Which Funeral They’re At, PreRecorded Weather, and City of Incandescent Light. Below, a yellow arrow points to a circular cutout featuring a portrait of a white man in front of bookshelves. Text below the image reads “Matt’s WordPress Site.”