MATT MASON—"ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE IN SPRINGDALE, UTAH, 2021" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Matt Mason's "On the Winter Solstice"

ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE IN SPRINGDALE, UTAH, 2021

    

When you ask at the candy store 

if they felt that, too, 

the bump that shook your whole hotel down the street, 

it starts an excited chat 

about what it might have been— 

earthquake, gas blast, rock drop, truck thump—and 

he mentions supersonic jets from the A.F. base, but 

that’s further east, he says, 

that’s more around Flying Monkey Mesa, 

he says. 

                                And 

                                you, 

                            remarkably, 

                            you now live 

                                         on a planet 

                           where Flying Monkey Mesa 

                                                exists. 

It’s named after animatronic dummies used to test ejector seats and, 

yes, there originally were 

monkeys, and, he says, one—only one—bear, 

but this is not about your species 

and its sometimes too-evident harm, this 

is about the wonder of your kind: 

in conjuring names that can make minds soar, 

in finding that thing you term humanity 

which pushes you to choose to use monkey robots 

instead of stirring more terror in actual monkeys 

(and bears) with the hard-to-dream technology 

    of a machine that flies, 

        of supersonic speeds, 

            of ejector seats and parachutes, 

                of this world 

                        where Flying Monkey Mesa 

                                            is just down the highway.

ABOUT THE POET 

Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and former executive director of the 

Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009–2022. Through the US State Department, 

he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. Mason is the 

recipient of a Pushcart Prize and his work can be found in The New York Times, 

on NPR’s Morning Edition, and in American Life in Poetry. Mason's fourth book, 

At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was 

released by The Old Mill Press in 2022. Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, 

the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia.

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