YOUR STORY
dear old friend
are you angry
why won’t you write me
beloved teacher
is what I called you
in my mind
mild morning
california depressing light
uncertainly standing
between the rooms
I ask myself
why such anger
I walk downtown
busy worrying
all day I feel
I am sure
a man is holding
an important geranium
in a story
you are writing
the geranium
I see
is golden
there is no such thing
as a gold geranium
except on the ear
who would wear
such horrible jewelry
it is also a color
deep zonal scarlet
I had a couch
it was totally red
I gave it to Betsy
her gray cat sleeps
she is in her garden
confusingly most geraniums
are not
they are some other flower
genus pelargonium
who cares
eventually everyone
POEM FOR AN ENVELOPE
yesterday
in the modern museum
the odalisque
stared at me
with green eyes
from a century ago
when many painters
started to see
the giant edge
of this contaminated
wondrous inexorable
storm cloud
age we find
ourselves alone
together under
all day using
eyes to drink
so much information
while the keepers
of the house
we have not elected
discuss just war
and our server farms
sound like the last
bee colony
ceremoniously touching
down on a field
of magenta flowers
dear future
I held this paper
so a few molecules
once part of me
are right now
to your ceiling
if you have one
rising and soon
through a green
space inside you
no one knows
an electric wheelchair
will quietly carry
one of our young soldiers
yours sincerely
hummingbird destroyer
Matthew Zapruder is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon 2010), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Currently he works as an editor for Wave Books and teaches as a member of the core faculty of UCR-Palm Desert’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. He lives in San Francisco.