Matthew Thorburn

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Matthew Thorburn

Let Her

 
read a letter the one      I never wrote I couldn’t send

let her catch      her breath

know I wish       I wrote Rosie wrote       love me leave with me
 

let her climb            a ladder leap into

a train instead of

the dusk the down the dark the dirt
 

how I wish her      this blank page this snowed-in field

untouched by      any hand or foot for

filling in or not      a letter or not let her      write a song and
 

slip into it draw      a picture and step into that

landscape let her      leave this      behind let her run

away      be angry and loud brave and alive
 

let her pull the trigger again and again and

on top of her      nothing      but the terrible stars.
 

Matthew Thorburn reads “Let Her”


Matthew Thorburn’s most recent book is The Grace of Distance, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. His previous book, Dear Almost, won the Lascaux Prize. He has new poems in Hotel Amerika, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review and The Best American Poetry 2020. He lives in New Jersey.