{"id":4459,"date":"2023-04-07T12:56:03","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T19:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=4459"},"modified":"2024-12-06T09:21:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T17:21:05","slug":"two-poems-by-matthew-dickman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/two-poems-by-matthew-dickman\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems by Matthew Dickman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"issue681\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in Willow Springs 68<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Author Profile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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Two Poems by Matthew Dickman<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Dog<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I’m hiding from the stars tonight. I’ve pulled<\/p>\n\n\n\n

every blind and turned off<\/p>\n\n\n\n

all the lights but one, which I’ve named after you,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

which I can see flooding the dark<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hallway of my high school when I open the locker<\/p>\n\n\n\n

with your name on it, the only one<\/p>\n\n\n\n

left, the universe flashing out<\/p>\n\n\n\n

onto the floor. I thought maybe I would find<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a note from you<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and that’s why I dreamt about it. In all the pictures<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve seen of my older brother<\/p>\n\n\n\n

he is never wearing a tuxedo. But I have one, bent at the edges,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of me and my twin on a boat, on prom night, happy,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

already a little drunk. I carry this picture wherever I fly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

so I can look at it right before the crash, below the screams<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and the smell of urine, I can look into his eyes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and know who I am. All night I’ve been worrying<\/p>\n\n\n\n

about money and cancer and the tooth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to get pulled out before it poisons me. I can smell<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the lemon I cut earlier for the carrots and fish. I don’t know<\/p>\n\n\n\n

what to do with myself. I’ve written the word Freedom<\/p>\n\n\n\n

on a piece of paper and taped it to a knife. Then I peeled it off<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and taped it to a book of Myakovsky<\/p>\n\n\n\n

poems. Finally I took it and stuck it on the screen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of my computer where there is a picture of Erika wearing the silver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

necklace I bought her. Outside a dog is sitting in the yard<\/p>\n\n\n\n

looking up a the porch. Every once in a while<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it wags its tail and whines, then it’s quiet, and then it begins to growl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halcion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are the illuminated world, floating ballroom, spark and flash,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

cold December star above the hospital,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

moonlit pond, little boat, your waters calm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as a spoon. I’ve never been higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can feel you melt on my tongue like a naked girl wearing a diamond<\/p>\n\n\n\n

crown, standing barefoot on a bed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of ice, her eyes turning white, her body a cloud broken by lightning,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

glowing like a nurse in a dark hall. You turn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

all my emergencies into cotton, all my fainting into land, my blue boy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

at the bottom of a paper cup, you make the meadow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

bright, make me brave. Now I can walk<\/p>\n\n\n\n

through the land of strangers and freeways, surgery and rubber gloves,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the panic, the knife, the ambulance of dawn,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the gurney being lifted into the air. When I’m made you lie down<\/p>\n\n\n\n

on the metal bed, when the first tube is threaded into me, I want you<\/p>\n\n\n\n

my cherry blossom season, my dream of gauze and light, your petals swirling<\/p>\n\n\n\n

around my feet, IVs and Jell-O, Tu Fu singing at the edge of the Yangtze forever.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":25234,"featured_media":719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4459"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37464,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459\/revisions\/37464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}