Matthew Cooperman, Wonder About The

 

BENZENE BURNS THE BUTTERCUP

            love at the end of the pipe
mild today    chance of scattered acids
will be spraying down roads cover mouths
evening reports a decline in light
            love in the throat
Columbine dust bin scattered pistols
diversification rain in the prairie dog towns
gas ‘em in hubris in August with intention
                 love in the
disturbed field a distributed harm
no pollen rest for the weary wind
      benzene burns the buttercup
weary bird in the sheening water
titmouse declares a nest for titration
      mild today      chance of scattered seed
the distributed field a total control
in the scattered sheens
            in the blistered throat
love at the end of the pipe

The latest from Fort Collins, Colorado poet and editor Matthew Cooperman, following numerous 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 Creek Publishing, 2023), a looping, rolling ecopoetic grounded in the author’s home landscape of Colorado, specifically the rhythms of the river that runs through Fort Collins. “the black sands of fire / past fire of countless and speechless—,” he writes, as part of the poem “A RIVER IN SPRING,” “leaves blown to ash / return again green / the river carries throughout / alteration of weather / cloud sun cloud   the grass whitens / the bones of the mice the fox finds / and dies another season [.]” There is a descriptive thickness to Cooperman’s rhythmic and looped lyric, one that offers an ongoing, book-length thread of extended stretches, layered upon layers of continuous, rhythmic flow articulating the Cache la Poudre River, ecological trauma and how deeply human activity and human thinking is tied to that land. “—what is the progress of a river,” the same poem offers, a bit further on, “the water the water / the argument they drink / jars   tests   tastes // words in their throats / thyroidial currents / gone astray / words in their throats    something to say / or singing   a future off key [.]” Cooperman offers the collection Wonder About The as a kind of ongoing field notes, sketching poems on contemporary and historical elements of the river, the landscape and the rock face, citing sight and sand and implication, simultaneously as document, declaration and demand for climate action: “a kind     a kind of life    half /// below zero” (“FIELD NOTES FOR WINDBLOWN LANDS”).