Moon Mirrored Indivisible

In his wide-ranging third collection, Matuk (The Real Horse) weaves a rich tapestry of human connection, meditating on sex, war, and ancestral inheritance. In “Doubled Channel Past,” the speaker ruminates wistfully on his history and heritage, opening on a time-warping moment of longing for the past as the past stares back through a photograph: “His own daughters doting/ On my Syrian grandfather were as happy/ As children as we are/ Thinking of their Andean high desert.” Other poems explore male sexuality in associative and musical language, while “Alpha Video Transcripts” less subtly transcribes dialogue from hardcore pornography. Matuk writes candidly of being a victim of abuse, exploring how this trauma impacts one’s sexuality in ways that reverberate over time: “Violation of me at nine/ Or twenty-seven so/ That thereafter my necessarily// Welcomed fear makes a room/ and puts me in it.” An immigrant of Syrian and Peruvian ancestry, he offers an affecting account of the guilt experienced as a result of living safely, while the American government wreaks havoc elsewhere: “Resting in my nerve to write about tear gas/ By way of drone and the lacquered/ Frame of my mirror wanting/ To be polished Now say ‘Enjoyable morning.’ ” Matuk writes with admirable confidence and skill. (Mar.)