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Selected Publications

The Purchase

Published in The Hopkins Review, Winter 2023

Late August, in the shade of a canvas

tarp, near the blue brick of Bolton Dance

Academy and the newly warped

traffic circle spilling toward the Hudson...

Front cover of the Winter 2023 copy of the Hopkins Review

In the Palace of Forgetting

A poem-interview with Keith Leonard, published in American Poetry Review, January/February 2023

What shape is the window of longing?

The window of longing is circular, in general. But it’s also an Apollonian Gasket, comprised of many smaller circles within it. Each circle recalls all other circles, just as each longing recalls all other longings.

Front cover of the January/February 2023 copy of the American Poetry Review

Giant Looks Giant in the Mirror

In Narrative, Poem of the Week 2021

I was an infant until they handed me my brother
for a rattle. I was a baby until I suddenly shot up to six
 

feet tall. I was a toddler then, learning how to fall...

Two Poems

In The Los Angeles Review

New Normal, Illinois

We are driving to an orchard! The blue dawn throws 

a glaze on the trees! Windfall falls! Coins from last night’s rain 

light up the grass! The past and present 

fuse in a single ride! 

Smiling man in a green sweater and collared shirt in front of a sunny window.

About Matthew Kelsey

Originally from Glens Falls, New York, Matthew Kelsey is a poet and actor based in Chicago. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a teaching fellowship from the Kenyon Review Young Writers Program, and an Idyllwild Arts Writers Week Fellowship.

 

Matthew has appeared in improv and sketch comedy shows at Second City (Chicago) and the Hugo House (Seattle). He is a member of Mega Pancake and is in Second City's musical improv conservatory.

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