Aby Kaupang and Matthew Cooperman
DISORDER, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED
To accomodate the length and the visual integrity of the poem, "Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified" is presented in two formats, a pdf file for those who would like
a visual text and an mp3 file for those using who prefer to listen.
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Aby Kaupang
{VALENTINE}
Dear makers of the machine,
which 4:38am she clasps projects its blue light kartwheels of
yellow fish dear to her palm wall pillow my torso a
temporary illuminant of bronze kelp dear she is
unflinchingly tired and has raced the doctors and grandmas
and won and is running in this circular blue night life a
dolphin on the ceiling spills goldfishs fall
she opts
rainfall ocean heartbeat dear maker of this sound product
had you ever intended the long fingered all night clasp of
prehensile toes fingers on high wattage desirable neighbor's
walls or the sadness feeble of a rainforest memory fusil in a
juvenile heart she's in a cave in the bed a combination of
hours and nexts
I too wish for the light
singing machine to press me a world other embraceable
your product is for good babies babies with a weekly delay
fat lipped tear swollen babies futuring in their parent's desires
I am nothing like your valentine baby darling all night you
watch the industrial circles of joyfish and have taken to
placing them in surprising contexts projector on the slatted
turnshade (brown) the natusi sofa (brown) shower tile
(water is the color of god)
oh god
dear maker of that machine
disability is a tree decorated in valentines and medical bills it
has placed the plum visage across the cranium walls that keep
us dark and shaken them and shaken me (and we
the husband and I our selves another narrative (written
slowly to interject her story only when she is breathing
stooling or sleeping and in her world these are rarely found
rubies) he is snoozing roiling apropos a slighted system of
inhalation sadness and return (gifts to me my world each
exhalation)
we have made many beds about the house for sleep we
have made them as declarations resistances love notes to
sleep each night a retreat a martyr a regularity we sneak or
heavy stone stagger to whichever area of suburban carpet will
nestle our need to
leave this—
which is beautiful
unchartered and ergo frightening frightened and angry at
doctors who do and do not do a continual relation to
devotion to the next specialist little circles of light all
Emersonian expanding us all bed bath and way
beyond has any one ever drowned in light or love or
development of a light illuminant dear there is an
inner light for certain and an outer coat reflective but also
there is a like and unlike child and between them I believe
shades of child
and my child
Aby Kaupang, author of Little "g" God Grows Tired of Me (forthcoming from SpringGun Press, 2013), Absence is Such
a Transparent House (Tebot Bach, 2011) and Scqenic Fences | Houses Innumerable (Scantily Clad
Press, 2008), has had poems appear in FENCE, La Petite Zine, Dusie, Verse, Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Parthenon West, PANK,
Aufgabe, 14 Hills, Interim, Caketrain, & others. She holds both an MFA in Creative writing as well as a Master's of Occupational Therapy from
Colorado State University. She lives in Fort Collins with the poet, Matthew Cooperman, and their two children. More information can be found
at http://www.abykaupang.com.
Matthew Cooperman is the author of Still: of the Earth as the Ark which Does Not Move (Counterpath Press, 2011), DaZE
(Salt Publishing Ltd, 2006) and A Sacrificial Zinc (Pleiades/LSU, 2001), winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize, as
well as three chapbooks, Still: (to be) Perpetual (dove | tail, 2007), Words About James (phylum
press, 2005) and Surge (Kent State University Press, 1999). A founding editor of Quarter After Eight, and current poetry
editor of Colorado Review, he teaches at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he lives with the poet Aby Kaupang and
his two children. More information can be found at Matthew Cooperman. |