Matthew Gustafson

Before the Funeral, After the Wake The parade of cars departs from the church lot heavy with permanence. I follow, our hazards a beg for remembrance, a morse for salvation, the hearse leaves the station and makes for what’s after but even death need merge onto highway to get there. All my life the fragile corpse of my faith buried and exhumed like boots in the winter. January hovers like a cold wet bird.

BEYOND thrilled to have my very wintery poem appear in the most recent issue of the wonderful @beavermag.bsky.social!! Go check out everyone’s wonderful work!

This is still my advice: Become a writer anyway. Fuck it, do it, it won't save you, but it's still a beautiful dream to write novels and short stories and poems and mingle with other dreamers and make art and laugh in the face of death. And writing is constant death. Live más.

a skeleton dressed as a fairy with pink wings and a wand ALT: a skeleton dressed as a fairy with pink wings and a wand

Folklore Review showing up in Bluesky like: