Matthew Cooperman
Fear of Meaning
will be pharaoh in the marking of doors
will resemble an archaic ingenuity
will employ a footnote in the revulsion of frame
will aver a new republic
will adjourn an adjectival movement
will arrive at 5 o’clock in the afternoon
(drinks after naps sex after drinks black milk
of daybreak we drink it)
will nurture a dread of emptiness
will appraise history like a clapping hand
will take great strides in descriptive motion vortextual
precisions of scientific diction
will and will not
(the shape of the vessel)
will close form as the anxiety of space uneven
and discordant I there are (are there not?)
no isolate satyrs
will sound like a cloud chamber happy at four
(at 5 o’clock in the afternoon) the Days
of Our Lives the terms of our whirl
will carry the tune of commitment
not so far
will draft a charmed treatment for talking dogs
will enjoy the dither of nigh
will seize on the circuit and seize on the circuit
will lose the case of the innumerable subjunctive
will cover great gets for first and last books
will queue up cliques that chitter and gar
will make of the trees a legible pact (mountain ash
suburban artifact)
will and will not
making love a good labor
will shine in the Club of Mint
will quicken the pace of Manichean device
will stain the Gulf of Longo with a sighing brill
(a melodious abstract a res cataract)
will sinter the core of the cooling stone
at 5 o’clock in the afternoon
(MacNeil and Lehrer Sonny and Cher
rush of the hour the way we sing now)
will make fratricide a dulcet opportunity
will secure the political union of Greece and Cyprus
at a price
(the weapons inspector the Jesus warmonger)
will employ the pronoun for delible means
(the subject position of which we’re prone
will be suspect
because we made it
though not always because we made it)
will be called on to be the finale of seem
will be a brief interest in Gallic authors
(calvados nom de rose gyno or para
decon or semen)
will be a result of the gradual loss of American Space
as a defining characteristic of American People
and Places
(these too at 5 o’clock)
will possess a nucleation to uncover the seed
will be a beheading in the plaza of shame
will be subjected to a hunger for determinate action
X not Y Charlotte not Irene
will manifest as sincerity in a Buffalo Gau crop circle
will be a response of the imagination to the branching possibilities
of known DNA
both here and in mice 1962 and in Florida
will be a dim fluence in the markets of style
(the Tinker’s refuge the Shadow’s delay)
will be a thirst for Middle Earth on which the original planet
is effaced by a series of drink cups
how sad the new hyacinth
how trim from electrostim the patented Robocast
the missing Golem
this extraordinary thirst for being first
(black milk of daybreak we drink it)
will foment a lack as alacrity
will be a sedulous cupidity
will create a Best New Improved Xtreme Unit
(draft beer in a bottle stem cell in a jar)
will be semaphore to a new application
some need beyond 5 o’clock in the afternoon
a learning to see a grim technology
our saying This and meaning That
a plane a man with plastics
a sickness sick with texts
will be an injunction to write this fear
the same old serum we must chime are lives