NORTHEAST OHIO SPOTLIGHT

Kelsey,

Poetry by ​​Matt Kilbane

The scene of my splitting
your lip accidentally
when you were six or so (it should’ve been
a fake-out stunt punch

but I slipped) appeared to me again
a gift, a lesson this
morning while running
around the Rose Bowl in Pasadena,

the sundried hunched-up
shoulders of San Gabriel
a big hit with this
Ohio guy whom mountains

typically remind of that
largess loanable
by nature to those of us less
inclined by nature to weather

a fault, but who
are learning, year on better year,
to forgive themselves— 
not today though, not this day which

I may as well date: Nov. 9,
2016, all voting over— 
I quit my jogging early, winded, and when
I make a votive of my resistance

less fist swinging
through sunrise I find it
flecked—sis, I’m sorry—with this
bright horrible surprise

Matt Kilbane 

Originally from Cleveland and a graduate of Oberlin College and Purdue University’s MFA Program, Matt Kilbane is currently completing a Ph.D. in English at Cornell University. His recent work—both poems and some critical prose—have appeared or are forthcoming in Gettysburg Review, Southern Indiana Review, The Adroit Journal, Kenyon Review Online, PMLA, and the Journal of Modern Literature.