Matthew Gellman, a finalist in Narrative’s Thirteenth and Tenth Annual Poetry Contests, was born in Dresher, Pennsylvania. He received an Academy of American Poets Prize and earned an MFA from Columbia University. Gellman lives in New York and teaches at Hunter College.

Grand Island, Nebraska

by Matthew Gellman

The pillow was a crook of shoulder I’d burrow
in at night, a cough one flight up the stairs

swelling out the choke of sawdust. Did I say
the raccoons were so intent on being perceived


between the walls that I often mistook
their scraping noises for ghosts? Pugnacity.
People on couch
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