Free Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder

They

    I remember the house
    where I first lived, it was
    small and wooden
    and next door to a loud
    friendly catholic family
    whose three sons Andy
    and something and something
    else constantly with mysterious
    lack of effort flicked
    an orange basketball
    through a rusty hoop
    and one afternoon taught
    me
duh.
Once
    a car screeched and hit
    a girl whose name
    I just remembered Julia!
    We weren’t there
    but came running out,
    it was quiet and we stood
    a little away from the man
    from the car who stood
    over her, there was
    a dark spot on her leg,
    it was broken, she was fine.
    But they decided to limit
    the danger by making
    the street one way
    with a speed limit of 30.
    Who were they?
    Since then they have been
    here looking over
    my shoulder, sometimes
    taking care, at others
    making the wrong decisions
    leading to more bad things.
    There’s no way
    to talk about it
    except maybe right now.
    Now when I look
    at photographs of me
    and the twins I hear
    the green glass beads
    separating my bedroom
    from theirs clicking in my mind,
    is that a memory? Or
    what I know those
    sorts of beads sound like
    in a breeze? Every day
    one block up to Connecticut Ave.
    and over to Oyster
    Bilingual where I sometimes
    was asked to stand
    in front of the class and hold
    up the picture of a duck
    or a house when the teacher
    said the words in Spanish
    and English both. I played
    Santa in the Christmas play
    which made sense.
    One day Luis stabbed
    another kid with a pencil
    in the throat, he was also fine.
    Another day I went to visit
    a friendly girl and ran
    straight through the plate glass
    window in her apartment building
    lobby and out the door
    and home, my parents
    never knew, I was as I would
    now say unscathed. Soon
    after we moved to Maryland
    where the new Catholics
    were threatened and mean,
    but that’s a different story
    I don’t yet remember.
    I think once a parent dies
    the absence in the mind
    where new impressions would
    have gone is clear, a kind
    of space or vacuum related memories
    pour into, which is good.

Looking Up

    from a book I was reading about
    a dead architect I saw not the fabulous
    empty pale blue almost white desert
    sky above the brand new sewage
    treatment plant. Nor my handwriting
    in which I had thankfully never written
    with a huge glowing made of fire
    finger stellar advertisements for starlight
    in the sky. Just a few artificial contrails
    made by jets on their way to Denver
    for me with my eyes to follow,
    fading like the thought that had made
    me raise my face to catch them
    at all. Now only the pure white drug
    interdiction blimp tethered to a bristling
    radar installation remains, scanning
    the sixty or so miles between here
    and the border for movement dispositive
    of a human trying to survive. Goodbye
    Robert Creeley, you died looking out
    over the plains. No more will
    your fractured days emerge for us
    to live a little while in, though we have
    your collected poems of which
    there are many. And farewell Kenneth
    Koch, whom I also never met.
    Reading his kaleidoscopes causes me
    to wonder if perhaps he is not
    a lawn chair, knocked over last night
    by a pack of javelina that scared
    Richard awake and made him wander
    to his table, still half asleep. Or
    a blue telephone, waiting in the forest
    to ring. This book you are holding
    is about dying, as will be the next one
    upon which you lay your hands.
    Thank you for listening. Now let us
    all go separately into the city and forget
    everything but our little prescriptions.

April Snow

    Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world
    is in a delay. All the political consultants drinking whiskey keep
    their heads down, lifting them only to look at the beautiful scarred
    waitress who wears typewriter keys as a necklace. They jingle
    when she brings them drinks. Outside the giant plate glass windows
    the planes are completely covered in snow, it piles up on the wings.
    I feel like a mountain of cell phone