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Matthew Cooperman is the author of, most recently, Wonder About The, winner of the Halcyon Prize (Middle Creek, 2023) as well as NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified), w/Aby Kaupang, (Futurepoem, 2018), Spool, winner of the New Measure Prize (Free Verse Editions, 2016), the text + image collaboration Imago for the Fallen World, w/Marius Lehene (Jaded Ibis, 2013), and other books. His eighth book, the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless, will appear in 2024 (Parlor Press). A Poetry Editor for Colorado Review, and Professor of English at Colorado State University, Cooperman lives in Fort Collins with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their two children. http://matthewcooperman.org

Thesis

Like the sky slung down from mountains in foaming water it rolls
     Like mountain scree it rolls in river round the blue drain of gravity

It breaks at its wrists, gathers at its waists, fattens the meadows,
            swells in eddies and pools of lazy trout

It rolls on from the river spine of the Divide, split at Cameron, peaked at
     Diamond & Mahler, the Never Summers, Snowys, Rawah

It rolls on through canyon body, through glacier body gone, it rolls
     and tumbles granitic time, the molten turn and seam

It rolls on through release—the hands-thrown-open outflow fields
                                                of alfalfa, sorghum and wheat,
            it rolls on through ditches, arterial and flush

Like an old signal, like a forgotten friend, behind the armory, train tracks,
     the fallen silo, crumbled dairy, the stacked up auto repair lot

It rolls on to Greeley, and 19th c. promises, rolls with laughing peals
     through Manifest Destiny, "rain follows the plow," "you just have
           to dig for wood and water," in speeches it rolls to the South platte,
     and the longer roll on roll to the Missouri, the Mississippi

It rolls on through name body — Hinono-eino, Arapahoe, and
     Mogwachi-núuchi, Ute — and far east Kiowa and Cheyenne

It rolls on through vanquished and massacred body, through Eaton and
     Pingree body, Larimer, Pitkin and Koenig body, through money
                                                money and the nameless body of earth

Through forgotten names, unmarked graves, bleached cow skulls
     behind the collapsed hay barn, it rolls through barbwire,
          child mortality, bad governors, it rolls wild roses and ore

It rolls on in fruit body — orchards of apples and peaches and plums,
     It rolls on as sugar beet, sweet in its labor and sweat in its weight

It rolls on in oil, the silent sea, One that came before, was an AFter me

Like an open vein, like a sluiced giant, it rolls on through cottonwood
     and willow body, through thistle and rabbitbrush, grama and
          bluestem, through drought and illusion, it rolls on
               beyond us, the river flayed in moonlight

 

Aby Kaupang is the author of Radiant Tether, & there’s you still thrill hour of the world to love,  NOS, disorder not otherwise specified,  Little “g” God Grows Tired of Me, and multiple other collections. She holds master’s degrees in creative writing and occupational therapy. 

Choosing to work outside of academia, she practices as an occupational therapist and nurse’s aide specializing in the treatment of neurodivergent and special needs children. 

Aby lives in Fort Collins, CO where she assists in organizing an annual book festival, hosts the reading series, EveryEye, and has served as Poet Laureate. More information can be found at abykaupang.com

Lameless

I am in love with  bees  and  sidewalks and
jewlery in fall. I am in  love with  ships  and
ship  builders and I am sure of my  house in
Chicago    with    bees    am   sure   of   small
conversations  and currency  and sure of my
ear near currents of  water and sure that the
sidewalk  crawls over lost agents and blame.
I am in love with the  effort of bees with less
yeses  and lost  formations and  yes I  am the
love of blameless Chicago.