Aby Kaupang and Matthew Cooperman
book release reading for
NOS [Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified]
Monday, May 22 at 7:30 PM
Sacramento Poetry Center
1719 25th Street
Host: Tim Kahl
Matthew Cooperman is the author of, most recently, NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified), w/Aby Kaupang, (Futurepoem, 2018), as well as 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), Still: of the Earth as the Ark which Does Not Move(Counterpath, 2011) and other books. A Poetry Editor for Colorado Review, and Professor at Colorado State University, he lives in Fort Collins with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their two children. www.matthewcooperman.org
Aby Kaupang is the author of, most recently NOS, disorder not otherwise specified (w. Matthew Cooperman, Futurepoem, 2018), Disorder 299.00 (w. Matthew Cooperman, Essay Press, 2016), Little “g” God Grows Tired of Me (SpringGun, 2013), Absence is Such a Transparent House (Tebot Bach, 2011) and Scenic Fences | Houses Innumerable (Scantily Clad Press, 2008). She has had poems appear in The Seattle Review, FENCE, La Petite Zine, Dusie, Verse, Denver Quarterly, & others. She holds master’s degrees in both creative writing and occupational therapy and lives in Fort Collins where she served as Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. More information can be found at http://www.abykaupang.com
GOOD DAY
And today was a good day, what
with your rising to bathe and dress
the daughter, put her on the bus
and let me sleep. I sleep and sleep
and cannot wash it out of me, tired
fear that rests too much on now.
The day goes on, backing up its horn
of plenty to this house, that house,
not this house. We think there is
delivery, sometimes there is delivery.
Then she sleeps, the wife, and I wake,
and the daughter grinds her fists into her
sockets. Nothing appears as it always does
like nothing you’ve seen before, closer
in the mirror, and more real, the collapse
of time, dark bright hour, the house
abed and blazing, a keening and a rocking
and a whimper, make it stop. Present is
this gift of the daughter’s enormous need,
and absent is the dream of her own dream,
a blue house and yellow car, two Chinese dogs
and a child of her own. B*** body of brood,
I cannot shake this futureless dream from sleep.
It is not hopeless—she brings a joy as “swim” and
“more” and “movie”—but it is wholly child,
a simple life without her own earned heartbreak.
I staunch the fear of my own death and her
perpetual childhood. Today was a good day.
