Author Archives: Matt Mason

About Matt Mason

Matt Mason has won a Pushcart Prize and two Nebraska Book Awards; was a Finalist for the position of Nebraska State Poet; organized and run poetry programming with the U.S. Department of State in Nepal, Botswana, and Belarus; and been on six teams at the National Poetry Slam. He’s been published in over 150 magazines and in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’ Almanac. He is executive director of the Nebraska Writers Collective and is consultant for the Nebraska Arts Council with Nebraska’s Poetry Out Loud program. His most recent book, The Baby That Ate Cincinnati, was released in 2013. Matt lives in Omaha with his wife, the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia.
October 13, 2015

Five Poems – Matt Mason

By Matt Mason

pawn-shop-goods



At Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, 2004

	for Jarvis

After
the five-finger History lesson

on the struggle for Irish independence, with emphasis
on the 1916 Easter Rising and the role of this prison-made-museum, 

one man (and the Union Jack he’d been waving
a few seconds before)
was on the cold floor, another man,
knuckle bloodied, stood over him,

spat to the side. The Garda
bustled over,

cuffed the bastard
(the one
on the ground),

apologized
as they rushed him
the Hell
away.

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