LYRIC NARRATIVE

1.

Today I took a coin

with the face of Millard Fillmore on it

and held it between my thumb

and forefinger

of my right hand up into the light.

It glowed

like some innocuous item

belonging to a loved one

I could later deliver to the secret police.

Pulling it down towards my face

I bit it

softly tasting lithium

then pushed it

away from my right eye,

which I had screwed up

like a saloon owner in 1864

thinking of the tiny Confederate

submarine Hunley that sank

the USS Housatonic

then disappeared

forever beneath the waters.

2.

The mascot of the local high school is

a "shorthorn," which is a kind of elf

that lives in the sea,

stealing the thoughts

of children and placing them

into the minds of decision makers

for the greater good,

i.e. its amusement.

I feel like an elk getting a pelvic exam.

Or a giant stuffed beaver, with perfectly white fur,

the color of snow just before an avalanche.

3.

Anyway, back to my story …

TURNING 40

It's not very hard to get older

Who wants to remember wanting to play with blocks

 

Thinking no one but me

Has just one birthday

 

I wanted so much

Besides all my fabulous toys

 

They bought me at huge gleaming stores

That make America great

Matthew Zapruder is the author of two collections of poetry: American Linden (Tupelo Press, 2002) and The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon, 2006), selected by Tony Hoagland as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award. He is also the co-translator of Secret Weapon, the final collection by the late Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu (Coffee House Press, 2008). Currently he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the New School and works as an Editor for Wave Books. In Fall 2007 he was a Lannan Literary Fellow in Marfa, Texas. In Fall 2008 he will be teaching at the MFA Program at the University of Houston.

POETRY