Postlude

Aftermath, if we can
call it that, the meaning
of the blues

all persons’ loves of life
discerning the subject
and the subject

Patois, Patria, whatever—
I like to worry my desire
how it is pointed unpleasantly
at you, an untrained voice
with a country

Heroes return as food, apocalypse,
cars, comics, remix, the sound of a
pulling train. It’s little solace
heard from curiosity on Mars

Snow, I assure you
I owe you something
and worry the silence between us
the more you are silent

A stutter will fall, fail
I think there’ll be room for change
but it’s just flood lights turned on the oaks

Nerves end near their victim
My anomie like a public troll
revolts the sky and holds up
a drinking glass

Sunset, that is, there’s a river
I miss it thinking of sunset

Too many people, Ode
We cannot add the manifest

Admit the typing is over
and there’ll be a person
to show—you, with your
untrained voice still howling

 

*Read and listen to the other two panels of Matthew Cooperman’s “American Triptych”:
Snow Globe
No Ode
Matthew Cooperman is the author of the text + image collaboration Imago for the Fallen World, w/Marius Lehene (Jaded Ibis Press, 2013), 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. A founding editor of Quarter After Eight, and co-poetry editor of Colorado Review, he teaches in the Creative Writing program at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their two children.