Matthew Graham is the Director of Creative Writing and an Associate Professor of English. Graham has received degrees from The State University of New York, Binghamton (BA); The Johns Hopkins University (MA); and the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop (MFA). He has published three collections of poetry: A World Without End, New World Architecture, and 1946. Graham is the co-director and co-founder of the USI RopeWalk Writers Retreat and the RopeWalk Writers Winter Retreat, as well as the RopeWalk Visiting Writers Series. He also is poetry editor of The Southern Indiana Review. Graham is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Maryland State Arts Council First Book Award, two literary fellowships from the Indiana Arts Commission, and a fellowship from the Vermont Arts Studio.

Milltown
after and for Liam Rector


by Matthew Graham

I grew up in Milltown
And lived on Ash Street with its dirty
Snow and the strolling hard boys

Of no compromise and little conscience.
But after being cuffed about the chops long enough
I got out of Milltown and somehow found myself

At a good school reading fancy books
And then at a good job living good
In the reinvaded meatpacking district of Culturetown.

And Milltown became the mute dream,
The dumb joke of the crippled children
Singing carols at the school for the blind.

But sometimes at a poetry reading,
Or a gallery opening, or a charity ball,
I flash on Milltown and have to go out

Into the street and have a smoke
To stop my hands from shaking,
To shake off the shadows of smoke stacks

And that grinning, useless Union Hall.
Occasionally at these venues I meet
A certain kind of sophisticated woman and when,

After drinks and small talk,
I see a flinch in her eye, a twitch
A kicked dog makes when you move too soon,

I know she knows Milltown.
And if by chance we leave together
(Something that happens more frequently as I sink

Through middle age and yet how long
Can this last? Not long.)
And climb in a cab and then into each other,

We vow in our solitude together
To never, ever, ever
Speak of, nor remember.

Matthew Graham