Poet: Matthew Dickman, Portland, OR
Small Doggies Single Poem Feature #7: Matthew Dickman, Portland, OR
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A Shrimp Taco for Diane Wakoski
The bowl of pink shrimp
I’ve tossed with citrus looks like a work crew
of baby aliens, exhausted
from digging up the streets all night
on a cold planet
and now they get to huddle together
in the acid heat of the lime juice
and fall asleep against a soft ear. I’m chopping up
a pineapple, a jalapeño. I’m trying to be brave
about the tooth I have to get pulled, trying not to faint
in hospitals or drink too much. A glass of whiskey
and it’s another country, a case of beer, another world.
I wonder how Michigan
can live without a single taco shack. Without
a single girl leaning in through
the window so she can talk to the boy
smoking pot behind the grill.
I’m throwing the green leaves of the cilantro in the air
for luck and money. Diane, if you were here
we could eat a couple of them
together! We could talk
about the great difference between corn tortillas
and flour tortillas, between
my brother’s sadness and my brother’s death, between the alleys
of childhood and the way we walk down them, hungry, happy in the dark.
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Matthew Dickman won the APR/Honnickman First Book Prize for All-American Poem (2008), chosen by Tony Hoagland and published by Copper Canyon Press. A book of great hopefulness, gratitude, and praise, it plumbs the ecstatic nature of daily life, where pop culture and sacred longing go hand in hand. All American Poem has also won the 2009 Oregon Book Award for Poetry.
His poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New Yorker and Tin House. He has received fellowships for his work from the Michener Center for Writers, the Vermont Studio Centers, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Matthew has been profiled in Poets & Writers and the New Yorker with his twin brother, poet Michael Dickman. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
His next collection of poems will be released by Norton in October of 2012, and is available for pre-order here: Mayakovsky's Revolver: Poems (at Amazon).
This poem was originally featured in Small Doggies Reading Series Chapbook #3, available for purchase here.