Matthew Zapruder

FEATURED WORK
• Tom Nevers Head
• Menemsha

Tom Nevers Head

No matter how far into the mist I walk
there is fear on my right hand
constant companion

and the sea on my left
with familiar anonymous solicitous hair
touches my feet

and above the great helmet
bluely thinks
Sea pale inky valueless emerald

why do you wash his feet?
he can only see one soul
do you know his version of sometimes watery

and at others deep progressive green
flecked with brown anger blue?
Sea behind him in mist

his companions remain awaiting his greeting
he holds it in hand like a ring
and swats

tiny raptors
blowing a score of zingara
gypsy winged women

with certain agendas
who come to feast
on a little half-sentient doubt shed

around his head a house built by laws
in which like an older brother
with his hands

he lives and over
your secret factories and blue dividing
avenues dangle

abstractions like watery women
who love
as if in an hour of examination

then removal
they have forgiven
a crime now hardly imagined

especially at night when he crushes
tiny half-sentient creatures you send
to feed him

sleep
like green scum
falls from his lashes into the morning

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Menemsha

The mangled word
so pleasing to darkfish
encircles our little harbor.

This is the name
of the green breast,
of the harbormaster's broken arms.

Old friend, word,
keep playing the whistle
in the stunted bush.

What else spoke from the hillside,
from inside the hill,
as I rode by on the ghost of a pony?

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