Birds of Texas by Matthew Zapruder

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 17, 2015   Birds of Texas   Matthew Zapruder

I like to be alone in someone else’s house, practicing my cosmic long distance wink. I send it out toward a mirror some distracted bored cosmonaut dropped on an asteroid hurtling vastly closer to our star. No one watches me watching thousands of television hours, knitting a golden bobcat out of tiny golden threadlets. These good lonely days every thing I’ve claimed I’ve seen for me to use it glows. I’m waiting for the love of Alice Ghostley, who keeps in various faces and guises appearing amid the plot machines, always to someone more beautiful and central in complex futile relation. They call her plain but to me her name sounds full of distant messages beamed a thousand years ago, only now to flower. Penultimate cigarette, high desert breezes, I’ve written all my plans and vows on careful scraps of paper piled beneath weirdly heavy little black rocks I gathered on many slow walks into town to ask no one who would bother naming this particular time between later afternoon and twilight. Crazed bee, I know the name of the plant you are in! Salvia! Also, the jay is not blue, nor the sky or indigo bunting, within particles and feathers sun gets lost making expert holographers out of us all. Passarina, I saw your dull blaze from the railing flash and an insect disappeared. Afternoon once again slipped into the gas station like it did those old days it had a body that moved and smoked among the people, whistling a cowboy song concerning long shadows, happy and unfree.            Copyright © 2015 by Matthew Zapruder. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I began this poem quite a few years ago when I was living in Marfa, Texas, but it never felt finished to me. Only recently was I able to finally figure it out. Alice Ghostley (1924-2007) was a ‘character actor’ and sidekick in many well-known television series, including Bewitched and Designing Women.” —Matthew Zapruder   Matthew Zapruder is the author of Sun Bear (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). He teaches at Saint Mary’s College, is an editor at large at Wave Books, and lives in Oakland, California. Most Recent Book by Zapruder   Sun Bear (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) "Mirrors" by Tada Chimako "The Atheist Wore Goat Silk" by Anna Journey "Could Have Danced All Night" by Dean Young Read This Poem   For National Poetry Month, we’ve teamed up with 826 National to produce Read This Poem, a celebration of poets in cities with 826 chapters. Read this week’s featured poems by poets from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038