Matthew Cooperman
—from Spool
* * *
ease and grace
and little waves
the chancing tide
around us is
arrivals singing waitingly
a lovely timbre
a pliant heart
complexly these are
coupled hours firebath
and fired hearth
two a crucible
played by tongue
game and naming
what truths rise
we are foreigners
to each other
by anchors sprung
to revel shores
resemble sea bottoms
and mountain tops
say equitas madness
dove in cleft
the beginning face
the tender’s own
* * *
to write a
year in threes
these little wiles
and causes what
they bring to
doorsteps projects turns
at the window
on my mind
limit is splendor
bright folds now
love or parenting
the time it
loses or looses
indelible hows plotting
the new child
the better man
bird in hand
a line singing
makes a limit
out of days
slowly the dark
an imperfect finity
forever in time
these nights splendor
* * *
it was white
when I looked
up the sky
child of mine
remembering red a
balloon over rooftops
sitting quietly classrooms
chalk sawdust disinfectant
a clear aquarium
into the future
by looking up
it was possible
a wearied man
to inhabit moods
ask three questions
who are others
what are theirs
lives the needs
to live surreptitiously
better packages minds
to mend and
so inhabit opposites
our alter ever
simply to hymn
be other you
in that classroom
kindnesses my strangers
* * *
have you seen
your hands in
dreams dark darkness
and light a
functional rest to
climbing thoughts why
let down people
and privilege glooms
these hands strangle
thoughts of freedom
by being mine
they remain still
we need dreams
and records of
people I knew
art not as
nostalgia but action
it seems in
a dream quite
real the starry
atmosphere love me
bathe me oiled
the detachment of
hands from bodies
so hard to
make real objects
* * *
_____
—from Spool
* * *
ease and grace
and little waves
the chancing tide
around us is
arrivals singing waitingly
a lovely timbre
a pliant heart
complexly these are
coupled hours firebath
and fired hearth
two a crucible
played by tongue
game and naming
what truths rise
we are foreigners
to each other
by anchors sprung
to revel shores
resemble sea bottoms
and mountain tops
say equitas madness
dove in cleft
the beginning face
the tender’s own
* * *
to write a
year in threes
these little wiles
and causes what
they bring to
doorsteps projects turns
at the window
on my mind
limit is splendor
bright folds now
love or parenting
the time it
loses or looses
indelible hows plotting
the new child
the better man
bird in hand
a line singing
makes a limit
out of days
slowly the dark
an imperfect finity
forever in time
these nights splendor
* * *
it was white
when I looked
up the sky
child of mine
remembering red a
balloon over rooftops
sitting quietly classrooms
chalk sawdust disinfectant
a clear aquarium
into the future
by looking up
it was possible
a wearied man
to inhabit moods
ask three questions
who are others
what are theirs
lives the needs
to live surreptitiously
better packages minds
to mend and
so inhabit opposites
our alter ever
simply to hymn
be other you
in that classroom
kindnesses my strangers
* * *
have you seen
your hands in
dreams dark darkness
and light a
functional rest to
climbing thoughts why
let down people
and privilege glooms
these hands strangle
thoughts of freedom
by being mine
they remain still
we need dreams
and records of
people I knew
art not as
nostalgia but action
it seems in
a dream quite
real the starry
atmosphere love me
bathe me oiled
the detachment of
hands from bodies
so hard to
make real objects
* * *
_____
Matthew Cooperman is the author of DaZE (Salt Publishing, 2006) and A Sacrificial Zinc (Pleiades/LSU, 2001), as well as three chapbooks, Still: (to be) Perpetual, Words About James and Surge. A founding editor of Quarter After Eight, and co-poetry editor of Colorado Review, he teaches at Colorado State University.
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