Matthew Cooperman, Wonder About The

 

BENZENE BURNS THEBUTTERCUP

            love at the end of the pipe
mild today    chance of scattered acids
will be spraying downroads cover mouths
evening reports a declinein light
            love in the throat
Columbine dust binscattered pistols
diversification rain inthe prairie dog towns
gas ‘em in hubris inAugust with intention
                 love in the
disturbed field adistributed harm
no pollen rest for theweary wind
      benzene burns the buttercup
weary bird in thesheening water
titmouse declares a nestfor titration
      mild today      chance of scattered seed
the distributed field atotal control
in the scattered sheens
            in the blistered throat
love at the end of thepipe

Thelatest from Fort Collins, Colorado poet and editor Matthew Cooperman, followingnumerous titles, including the collaborative NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified) (with Aby Kaupang; New York NY: Futurepoem Books, 2018) [see my review of such here] is Wonder About The (Beulah CO: Middle CreekPublishing, 2023), a looping, rolling ecopoetic grounded in the author’s homelandscape of Colorado, specifically the rhythms of the river that runs throughFort Collins. “the black sands of fire / past fire of countless andspeechless—,” he writes, as part of the poem “A RIVER IN SPRING,” “leaves blownto ash / return again green / the rivercarries throughout / alteration of weather / cloud sun cloud   the grass whitens/ the bones of the mice the fox finds / and dies another season [.]” There is adescriptive thickness to Cooperman’s rhythmic and looped lyric, one that offersan ongoing, book-length thread of extended stretches, layered upon layers ofcontinuous, rhythmic flow articulating the Cache la Poudre River, ecologicaltrauma and how deeply human activity and human thinking is tied to that land. “—whatis the progress of a river,” the same poem offers, a bit further on, “the waterthe water / the argument they drink / jars  tests   tastes // words in theirthroats / thyroidial currents / gone astray / words in their throats    something to say / or singing   a future off key [.]” Cooperman offers thecollection Wonder About The as a kind of ongoing field notes, sketchingpoems on contemporary and historical elements of the river, the landscape andthe rock face, citing sight and sand and implication, simultaneously asdocument, declaration and demand for climate action: “a kind     a kind of life    half /// below zero” (“FIELD NOTES FORWINDBLOWN LANDS”).