MATTHEW WIMBERLEYElegy at Night
-for my father After, alone broke down on a highway one hundred miles west of Laramie. Shadows bend snow-fences over hills toward the end of America-- through wheatgrass braided like rope two feet high and falling in one long tide as the wind sweeps clear of the trees. Suppose I can say anything to him now— infinite unchained from life. In the luminol dash glow my thoughts turn the floodlights to a tether. He’s out there just beyond reach ready to disappear. My favorite picture of him is a mug shot. There was a night when my parents were in love before I was conceived and the slow drift between them wasn’t noticeable—he’d knocked a man out, broke his nose. In the picture he’s young wearing a rugby shirt, back against white cinderblocks. He’s laughing, the way a smirk cuts at his cheeks. And his shadow permanent on the wall dark enough to fall asleep in. Once, young and wild in the mountains I never thought who else might one day spread out a blanket in thistle or dust—stare up at night. All that dead light sure to outlast everything I love. 109 The Paris-American 
Matthew Wimberley is a Starworks Fellow and MFA candidate at New York University. A finalist for the 2012 Narrative 30 Below Contest, and semi finalist for the Slope Edition Chapbook Contest, his writing has appeared in Rattle, Puerto Del Sol, and Connotation Press, where his poems were introduced by Dorianne Laux. Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains with his two dogs and spent March and April of 2012 driving across the country. A Localist poet, he currently resides in Brooklyn where he is completing his first book length manuscript All the Great Territories.
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Next week's poet:
Sarah Vap 
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