Red State. Poems by Matt Daly, selected by Dan Vera and Ron Mohring as Number 10 in the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series.

Publication:  July 4, 2019 [100 copies]
20 pages
ISBN 978-1-949333-58-9
$ 9.00

Matt Daly‘s first book-length collection of poems, Between Here and Home, is just out from Unsolicited Press. Matt teaches reflective and creative writing to people of many ages and professions. He collaborates regularly with visual, performing, and literary artists on indoor and outdoor exhibitions of text-based work. Matt has received a Neltje Blanchan Award for writing inspired by the natural world and a Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the Wyoming Arts Council. He is a resident faculty member at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. He lives in Wyoming with his wife and son.

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Blue Hyacinth at 30,000 Feet

after Gate A-4

What started in a flower shop
on Center Street: a fragrance.

Yes, people went on
killing other people

with substances banned
or fostered by one treaty

or another. Yet everywhere
the abundant breath

of flowers. A rumor spread
that one diminutive woman

with notably powerful hands
carried a blue hyacinth

so royal in its purple
that more than one TSA agent

looked away when the woman
with her blossoms boarded

the airbus departing Minneapolis
for San Antonio. After the safety

demonstration, the possibility
emerged for each person to stay

inside each body, for blood and air
to make their passages

to and from the vital parts
held delicately by skin,

like bees from blossoms
to their sweet chambers.

–Thank you to Pilgrimage for first publishing this poem.

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• Read Matt’s poem “Hard Winter” – selected as a Poem of the Week by Split This Rock.
• Read more about Matt’s book Between Here and Home.
• Order Matt’s chapbook Red State here. Thank you for supporting this poet!