by Matthew Dickman
Matthew Dickman was born in Portland, Oregon. His first collection, All-American Poem (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), received the
American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Award. In addition, Dickman has received fellowships for his work from the Michener Center for Writers, the Vermont Studio Centers, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He lives and works in Hudson, New York.
Benevolence
AFTER MY OLDER brother died and I had punished
the migraines with enough codeine
to sleep through the night I walked out
into the backyard with the moon illuminating everything
like an antidepressant and threw a rock
at two feral cats who seemed bent on fucking or killing
each other. It was not a mystical moment,
or a therapeutic one,
I did not link the feline fight of wills with my own, it just
felt good to throw something.
The fact that I missed
is not a telling sign of my own benevolence or a metaphor
for the inaction of violence,
it only means that I have always sucked at baseball. That I
couldn’t throw a ball into a glove
if the ball was in my right hand
and the glove in my left. That I preferred to be
standing in the outfield where the grass had grown tall
and the clouds formed a menagerie
of animals above my head. Standing there
with only one wish:
that no one would hit the ball hard enough to reach me.
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