Schwinn

By Matthew Zapruder b. 1967 Matthew Zapruder

I hate the phrase “inner life.” My attic hurts,

and I’d like to quit the committee

for naming tornadoes. Do you remember

how easy and sad it was to be young

and defined by our bicycles? My first

was yellow, and though it was no Black

Phantom or Sting-Ray but merely a Varsity

I loved the afternoon it was suddenly gone,

chasing its apian flash through the neighborhoods

with my father in vain. Like being a nuclear

family in a television show totally unaffected

by a distant war. Then we returned

to the green living room to watch the No Names

hold our Over the Hill Gang under

the monotinted chromatic defeated Super

Bowl waters. 1973, year of the Black Fly

caught in my Jell-O. Year of the Suffrage Building

on K Street NW where a few minor law firms

mingle proudly with the Union of Butchers

and Meat Cutters. A black hand

already visits my father in sleep, moving

up his spine to touch his amygdala. I will

never know a single thing anyone feels,

just how they say it, which is why I am standing

here exactly, covered in shame and lightning,

doing what I’m supposed to do.

Matthew Zapruder, “Schwinn” from Come on All You Ghosts. Copyright © 2010 by Matthew Zapruder. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.

Source: Come on All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon Press, 2010)

Biography

Poet and editor Matthew Zapruder was born in Washington, DC. He earned a BA in Russian literature at Amherst College, an MA in Slavic languages and literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Zapruder’s poems employ nuanced, conversational syntax to engage themes of grief, perception, and logic. As Dana Jennings noted in the New York Times, Zapruder . . .

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