Matt Cariello

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Waiting

My books are in boxes waiting
to be moved to other boxes
waiting to be moved
to other rooms, which wait
to hold them. After that,
who knows?
It starts again,
this constant relocation
of the moment that box
is opened in another room,
another box, another book.

Matt Cariello's fourth book, Self Portrait in the Dark (Finishing Line Press) will be released in May 2025. It follows The Empty Field, (2022 Red Moon Press), Talk (2019) and A Boat That Can Carry Two (2011) both published by Bordighera Press. He's had stories, poems, haiku, and reviews published in Bennington Review, Voices in Italian Americana, Poet Lore, Evening Street Review, Modern Haiku, The Long Story, Indiana Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Typehouse, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Journal, and others. He's currently a senior lecturer in the English department at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. These poems are also part of his new collection, Colloquy on Mad Tom, due out in June 2025.