Reviewed by L Lois
At the Mercy of the Flies
by Matt McBride
Half Mystic Press
April 2026, Paperback, 100 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1948552202
If the news is overwhelming and your feed fills you with confusion, Matt McBride has a new poetry collection to help you over the rough patches. At the Mercy of the Flies is a personal and political exploration of inner recesses — the places where all the images mix together, a dystopian kaleidoscope weird enough to be eerily familiar. Naming each delirious bit and pointing out the absurdity of our human condition at fault, McBride exposes our anxiety for what it is — a condensing of time that warps the moments. We’re left at the mercy of the flies buzzing around the dove.
I scratched off my skin / to get at the tinfoil beneath. (27)
Organized in three sections that unfurl like rap-adjacent free verse, McBride takes the reader into a magical dreamscape. The opening set of poems, like the whole book, becomes a page-turning link, from poem to poem, strengthened by the absence of explicit titles. The narrator explores his past lovers through a dream lens and expresses disappointed regret in his failure to form predictable emotions. We quickly catch on — this collection is the song of a visionary, the call of a man sorting out tough things with a jazz band jamming behind him. No tidy orchestra, here.
On Saturn’s table we lay / naked, powdered with sugar. (54)
Through the book’s three meta-poems, each of roughly equal length and light on the eyes page formatting, we meet a cast of characters that includes lovers, children, and dictators. Identities, like most concrete details, are kept hazy — rapid-fire word choices keep the narrative brisk and surprising. On first reading, there is a dull conclusion that the future is unfolding and we’d best alter our state of consciousness to survive. On second reading, the themes coalesce around the idea that only in recognizing the absurd in the moment can we hope to order the future.
McBride paints dense and ephemeral scenes where people float and animals talk. There is a dull-stare throughout, a blandness that is part of the magic. It’s the cost of contemporary overwhelm. It’s when our senses are over-stimulated and the stakes are high, when the decisions calling to be made seem portentous, when we can feel our heartbeat even at rest. The poet has distilled dystopia by noting its lyricism; in doing so, he’s defanged fear and turned fury into amusement.
Though blindfolded, / we could see a little / but didn’t want to ruin the game.(66)
When our president / promised us nothing, // we took all of it. (63)
Feast your ears on the scenes the poet creates for your inner eye. Wander the hallways and learn what the view is from the ceiling. Approach death, then realize the party ends, but the show goes on. Resign yourself to a need for medication to survive, one Matt McBride poem at a time. Thank his risk-taking publisher, Half Mystic. Put on your parachute and jump in the bathtub, let the water run electric blue while the butterflies flock out of the drain. Experience the end of the world, with whimsy. We’re all in this together. Pull the ripcord when you need to. McBride is ready to catch you, to fill in the blanks, to set you on your feet again, just before the dragon’s breath flames.
We communicated solely by postcards / attached to balloons. (61)
What I mean to say / is that the bell of myself was still, / that my heart was taxidermied. (44)
About the reviewer: L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting into her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies, while prioritizing writing, publication, and arts-related volunteerism. Her poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, The Brussels Review, Washington Square Review, Hanging Loose Magazine, Chiron Review, Poetry Breakfast, among other publications. L. Lois is an Associate Member of the League of Canadian Poets, is part of the editorial team at Quibble Lit, and freelances as a business feature writer and poetry workshop leader. A selection of her published work is linked at https://poeting.my.canva.site.