Nebraska: Matt Mason
Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet, serving from 2019-2024.
Photo: Courtesy of The Minden Courier
that when you come here on a trip by yourself and
investigate why you can’t stop thinking about the place
and had thought maybe it was the park itself and Walt
and all his stories is that you were wrong and you’re
here because of you and all the stories you’ve been
part of on trips made here in past years to this cheerful
once upon an orange grove, and it’s like pulling out
boxes from the basement and trying to fit into clothes
from different ages of your life and you can’t with them
small or faded or so brittle they splinter apart like straw or
just out of fashion because you can’t be four or twenty-
five or forty-six ever again, you have to walk with one
stiff elbow, the toe and heels that hurt, all these small
pains that now take ages to sooth, you can’t change any
of this except maybe that gut but, man, you’ve come to
exactly the wrong place for that when there are churro
carts, peanut butter dipped in chocolate, a thousand
sweet things shaped like Mickey Mouse’s head, there is
a legendary sandwich you find to be ham and cheese
wedged inside of something more funnel cake than
bread, you came here to ride Space Mountain and
find answers but the answers aren’t on roller coasters,
they’re in the rhythm of your body’s aches as you hike
up Disneyland Drive thinking about trips with your
daughters, wife, parents, friends you find yourself
walking without, here in the middle of your life, halfway
to the next: Don’t you dare waste a breath.
From At the Corner of Fantasy and Main (Old Mill Press, 2022)
Courtesy of Matt Mason