Matt Ryan
My hometown puts out a postcard
featuring our sewage disposal plant.
There may not be a lot to do here,
but we’re putting the world
on notice that we know how
to make shit disappear. We have
this need to flush away that part
of our past where we hung
those two black kids from the tree.
The locals brag that we’re cured
of such behavior and that we’re a city
on the move, as if we lassoed a rocket
ship that carried us to Mercury
where the years are shorter,
catching us up to the modern world.
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Matt Ryan’s poems have appeared in over twenty journals, including Pindeldyboz, Opium and Word Riot. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee, editor for Best New Writing and English professor at Concordia University St. Paul. He holds the MFA in Writing from Spalding University.
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