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Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His chapbook Snake Mountain Almanac won the 2014 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Contest from Seven Kitchens Press. In addition, Wimberley was Third Place winner in Narrative’s Seventh Annual Poetry Contest, a finalist in the 2012 Narrative 30 Below Contest, and a winner of the 2015 William Matthews Prize. He received his MFA from New York University and worked with children at St. Mary’s Hospital as a Starworks Fellow. He lives in Brooklyn.

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Elegy Written in Dust Kicked Up along a Back Road

by Matthew Wimberley
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after Larry Levis


Maybe grass
gentle against the anklebones
of cows going up and over
the pasture
becomes no different from people
who turn to light
at the end.

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Reader Comments

  • Heartbreaking, tender, and just beautiful. I so enjoyed this read....
  • Beautiful....
  • Love the title, love the lyricism, love the South depicted by...
  • Wonderful narrative poem: well set up, well sustained. This is...
  • I am rocked. This is so beautifully executed and harrowing....

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