Matthew Dickman is the author of Wonderland (Norton, 2018) as well as the collections All-American Poem, 50 American Plays (cowritten with his twin brother, Michael Dickman), Mayakovsky’s Revolver, Wish You Were Here, 24 HOURS, and Brother (cowritten with Michael). He is the recipient of the May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Kate Tufts Award from Claremont College. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his partner, the poet Julia Tillinghast, and their two sons.


Photograph by Josh Tillinghast.

Three Poems

by Matthew Dickman

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

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