Thrush Poetry Journal
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Matt Morton
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Reflections on a Visit to Los Angeles

part firework, part robot: I hiked to the overlook 
          to glimpse the gussied-up city at night: the off-season 

ballpark half-lit beyond the sand acres: drought-
          dried grass, cellophane wrappers, coyote shit: the fence―
its curled-up chain-link skirt moved in the wind: a palace

          a castle in need of green moat only: there might have been
birds, a sonata trickling out of an adobe duplex

          hello moment like a monument: again I find you fragile
verging on crumbling into the sea: Park as in lake 
          circled by manicured grass where the homeless sweat 

in their canvas tents: Echo as in the bleating of cars ricocheting 
          off cliffs: orange soda bottle cap clanking against 

the observatory’s shady-side wall: as in misting into
          the past, like the very loud voice of my mother, carried 
for years in my stomach’s dried-up well: in close proximity

          to the instruction manual: in the vicinity of the hollow
chamber where red blood pumps: where the longing is



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Matt Morton's poetry appears in Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. A finalist for a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, he is also the recipient of the Sycamore Review Wabash Prize for Poetry, a work-study scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the John Hollander Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He currently is a Robert B. Toulouse Doctoral Fellow in English at the University of North Texas.




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