Category: William Matthews
Drizzle By William Matthews
Drizzle Baudelaire: ‘The dead, the poor dead, have their bad hours.’ But the dead have no watches, no grief and no hours. At first not…
Poem (The Lump Of Coal My Parents Teased) By William Matthews
Poem (The Lump Of Coal My Parents Teased) The lump of coal my parents teased I’d find in my Christmas stocking turned out each year…
Job Interview By William Matthews
Job Interview Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife He would have written sonnets all his life? DON JUAN, III, 63-4 “Where do you…
The Snake By William Matthews
The Snake A snake is the love of a thumb and forefinger. Other times, an arm that has swallowed a bicep. The air behind this…
Alcide By William Matthews
Alcide Walking with Jesus the slow, behind the beat. Mr. Resistance. Mr. Ohm, Mr. Exactly Lame. By some reluctance, some restraint, if it be a…
On The Porch At The Frost Place, Franconia, N. H. By William Matthews
On The Porch At The Frost Place, Franconia, N. H. So here the great man stood, fermenting malice and poems we have to be nearly…
Bedtime By William Matthews
Bedtime Usually I stay up late, my time alone. Tonight at 9o I can tell I’m only awake long enough to put my sons to…
Mingus At The Showplace By William Matthews
Mingus At The Showplace I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen and so I swung into action and wrote a poem and it…
A Walk By William Matthews
A Walk February on the narrow beach, 3o A.M. I set out south. Cape Cod Light on its crumbling cliff above me turns its wand…
The Blues By William Matthews
The Blues What did I think, a storm clutching a clarinet and boarding a downtown bus, headed for lessons? I had pieces to learn by…
A Roadside Near Ithaca By William Matthews
A Roadside Near Ithaca Here we picked wild strawberries, though in my memory we’re neither here nor missing. Or I’d scuff out by myself at…
No Return By William Matthews
No Return I like divorce. I love to compose letters of resignation; now and then I send one in and leave in a lemon- hued…
A Small Room In Aspen By William Matthews
A Small Room In Aspen Stains on the casements, dustmotes, spiderless webs. No chairs, and a man waking up, or he’s falling asleep Many first…
Eyes By William Matthews
Eyes the only parts of the body the same size at birth as they’ll always be. ‘That’s why all babies are beautiful,’ Thurber used to…
A Poetry Reading At West Point By William Matthews
A Poetry Reading At West Point I read to the entire plebe class, in two batches. Twice the hall filled with bodies dressed alike, each…
Homer’s Seeing-Eye Dog By William Matthews
Homer’s Seeing-Eye Dog Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep with a purpose, so far as I could tell. How he got…
A Happy Childhood By William Matthews
A Happy Childhood My mother stands at the screen door, laughing. “Out out damn Spot,” she commands our silly dog. I wonder what this means….
Foul Shots- A Clinic By William Matthews
Foul Shots- A Clinic for Paul Levitt Be perpendicular to the basket, toes avid for the line. Already this description is perilously abstract: the ball…
A Life Of Crime By William Matthews
A Life Of Crime Frail friends, I love you all! Maybe that’s the trouble, storm in the eye of a storm. Everyone wants too much….
Dire Cure By William Matthews
Dire Cure “First, do no harm,” the Hippocratic Oath begins, but before she might enjoy such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor. It…
A Poetry Reading At West Point – William Matthews
I read to the entire plebe class, in two batches. Twice the hall filled with bodies dressed alike, each toting a copy of my book….
