Saturday Dec 21

CoopermanMatthew Matthew Cooperman is the author of two full-length collections, DaZE (Salt Publishing, 2006) and A Sacrificial Zinc, winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize (Pleiades/LSU, 2001), as well as three chapbooks, Still: (to be) Perpetual (Dove | Tail Poetry, 2007), Words About James (Phylum Press, 2005), and Surge, winner of the Wick Chapbook Prize (Kent State, 1998).  A founding editor of Quarter After Eight magazine, Cooperman is currently co-poetry editor of Colorado Review.  He teaches poetry and directs the MFA program at Colorado State University.  More information can be found here and here.
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Spool 26

 

snow so real
it singes as
it falls both
here and memory
something thick like
blankets' heavy burden
on the lap
your hands cold
fully given still
was a ride
through the snow
some Lake Tahoe
local placing tendency
blue parent eye
with lost ponies
skidding across just
lessons learned how
real life imaginary
works to source
riding riding it
snowed so hard
you could say
we weren't moving
white amniotic holocraft
blood and nostrils
except the bells
kept us safe
come back now
a ringing through
when I was
true of singe

§

a guardian angel
protein's been discovered
fighting cancer wherever
the man or
woman hospital blue
it goes on
a tiny string
of defenses webbing
a process central
to life how
a cell responds
to stress or
perturbation in its
environment a "P
53 has an
awesome responsibility" not
fully understood the
structure of flaws
and triggers raising
inherited members just
like Aunt Tiny
who left early
her guardian angel
proteinic fields whelming
not quite fully
elusive codes the
bed near a
window intersection Maria
and Willow secret
mutative letters hush
of longevity snowing
and not fixing

§

so many lives
looks the jeans
of the hair
the genes of
culture mysterioso highball
biologically inscribed goth
cells and gangs
by the entrance
of the igloo
sift particularity of
muttonchops and tatts
we are known
by and for
wire knots birds
of memory filaments
some dancing strategies
or bright sky
a cause of
appearances the lives
of the poets