The Sound of Sugar....Matt Mason

September 21: Poem For Omaha

There’s just enough mist
for the lamp posts to masquerade
as tent poles tonight;

instead of spilling
down, they hold up
canvases of light.

And 30th Street shines
like a river under the moon
washing past brown pawn shops gone to bed,

because this city smells
beautiful, this city
of wet leaves

sticking like frescos
along the sidewalks, a masterpiece
the length of my city

that I remember–with a start
as I drive home, window down–
I love.



About the poet:

Matt Mason has won a Pushcart Prize and 2 Nebraska Book Awards (for Poetry in 2007 and Anthology in 2006); organized and run poetry programming with the U.S. Department of State in Kathmandu, Nepal and Minsk, Belarus; and been on 5 teams at the National Poetry Slam. He is Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective, former board president of the Nebraska Center for the Book, and has served as the Nebraska State Coordinator for Poetry Out Loud, a Poetry Foundation/NEA program. His website is matt.midverse.com.  This poem appears in his book The Baby That Ate Cincinnati, out from Stephen F. Austin University Press in Spring, 2013.

About the Sound of Sugar:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors.We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to