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The Prelude

By Matthew Zapruder b. 1967 Matthew Zapruder

Oh this Diet Coke is really good,

though come to think of it it tastes

like nothing plus the idea of chocolate,

or an acquaintance of chocolate

speaking fondly of certain times

it and chocolate had spoken of nothing,

or nothing remembering a field

in which it once ate the most wondrous

sandwich of ham and rustic chambered cheese

yet still wished for a piece of chocolate

before the lone walk back through

the corn then the darkening forest

to the disappointing village and its super

creepy bed and breakfast. With secret despair

I returned to the city. Something

seemed to be waiting for me.

Maybe the “chosen guide” Wordsworth

wrote he would even were it “nothing

better than a wandering cloud”

have followed which of course to me

and everyone sounds amazing.

All I follow is my own desire,

sometimes to feel, sometimes to be

at least a little more than intermittently

at ease with being loved. I am never

at ease. Not with hours I can read or walk

and look at the brightly colored

houses filled with lives, not with night

when I lie on my back and listen,

not with the hallway, definitely

not with baseball, definitely

not with time. Poor Coleridge, son

of a Vicar and a lake, he could not feel

the energy. No present joy, no cheerful

confidence, just love of friends and the wind

taking his arrow away. Come to the edge

the edge beckoned softly. Take

this cup full of darkness and stay as long

as you want and maybe a little longer.

Source: Poetry (September 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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