Spool 8
Matthew Cooperman
brachial harp hand
touches of strum
my helix leaf
fall and widening
gyres of atmosphere
a monk’s spring
a pebbled somnium
or farmer in
fields carving wheat
runs through his
frequency turning bright
Deere its green
and yellow motion
a part of
the field’s design
bending blending the
greens see seasons
on a wheel
by an ox
plow all elbows
and waddles now
child runs through
black budgie veil
the gleaning we
grow our ears
glorious shells they
are bright science
branching harvest chir
of wind the
snare drone rattles
our are instrument
an apposite hum
of finches or
grooves or eyes
of a fox
up look up
§
or fire’s flare
to singe hair
a dream not
quite very real
this plume flame
that cinders trees
a ridge alight
and we aghast
the cylinder flare
some 200 meters
accentual gasp that
matters the matter
we are alive
in ashy tatters
or fresh burrs
dike rises up
and the sill
stretches across we
are conveyered and
we’re also convexed
but the cave
the cave of
our ideal dreams
seems to linger
in history and
seethe the tendons
our tendency to
believe nature’s kind
is just indifference
to inhuman ways
keep on with
the garden hose
our meek prayers
~~~~~
Matthew Cooperman is the author of Still: of the Earth as the Ark which Does Not Move (Counterpath Press, 2011), DaZE (Salt Publishing Ltd, 2006) and A Sacrificial Zinc (Pleiades/LSU, 2001), winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize, as well as three chapbooks, Still: (to be) Perpetual (dove | tail, 2007), Words About James (phylum press, 2005) and Surge (Kent State University Press, 1999). A founding editor of Quarter After Eight, and current poetry editor of Colorado Review, he teaches at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he lives with the poet Aby Kaupang and his two children. More information can be found at www.matthewcooperman.com.