Harness

The singularity
of the dapple I will
move into, the last
glisters of autumn. I tell myself

it was I
who began it,
the fusing
of each

spell, and the subtractive,
ebb bays of brass:

Boy I saddle who cannot
shake me, and I will not
slide off.



by Matthew Cook

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Matthew Cook earned his BA and was the recipient of the Stewart Prize at UC San Diego for his creative writing. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was both a Maytag Fellow and an Alberta Kelly Fellow in Poetry. His poems have appeared in Assaracus, Penumbra, The Squaw Valley Review, and elsewhere. He has worked as everything from a legal researcher to a writing tutor to a barista. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, and is currently revising a full-length collection of poems.