O wild cat,
flat on your back with
your head on my

arm, old-man
belly exposed and
legs occasionally

twitching in their
natural dreams,
your serious claws

knead the breast of
instinctive sky
past my book,

through the trees,
beyond your masterful
display of the slippery

art of surrender and we,
who understand such things,
are the Ancients once more.

Selected byRaymond Huffman
Image credit:Chris Abney
Matt Dennison

After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans

(street musician, psych-tech, riverboat something-or-other, door-to-door

poetry peddler, etc.), Matt Dennison finished his undergraduate degree at

Mississippi State University where he won the National Sigma Tau Delta

essay competition (judged by X.J. Kennedy). He is the author of Kind Surgery

from Urtica Press (Fr.) and  Waiting for Better from Main Street Rag Press.

His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Verse Daily, Rattle, Bayou Magazine,

Redivider, The National Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Modern Haiku, Tulane

Review, The Inflectionist Review, DIAGRAM, Hiram Poetry Review, Slipstream,

The Midwest Quarterly, Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review,

among others. His fiction has appeared in ShortStory Substack, THEMA, GUD,

The Blue Crow (Aus), Prole (UK), The Wondrous Real and Story Unlikely.

He has also made poetry videos with Michael Dickes, Marc Neys,

Jutta Pryor & Marie Craven.

 

Kind Surgery (Urtica Press)

 https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/waiting-for-better-matt-dennison/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008709036240