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 theJournal of Modern Literature.