MATTHEW DICKMAN

Black Ice 

All night it felt like I was
in your room,
the French doors opened out
onto the porch, the table
there, the yard there and the last
of the flowers there, all night
all I wanted was the vanilla shadow
of your fingers, the dark
candy of your armpits, the light
snow your feet seem to be,
and all night the night was very much
like a ship, though you will
hate the way I say this, a ship
that appears to be both
walking toward the coastline
of your hips, and slowly moving
away, all night
all the water in the world
felt as still as a teacup
wrapped in tissue and placed deep
into a box full of those white
pieces of foam
people call popcorn. This morning
I drank coffee with sugar
which I never do, and kept crying
which is something I tend to do
whenever I think I have
walked into your house
with a Japanese sword and cut you
in half while you slept.
Just thinking of you asleep
makes me want to pull every flower
out of the ground
and throw them onto your bed.
This is a hated world,
I know, and we are fighting the star
riddled, burnt out, sky
of our brains. I keep waking up
in a box made out of black
ice, and sometimes there's your voice
speaking in another language
and sometimes there's nothing,
but always a little fruit hangs
from a tree,
where I have carved my name,
and carved your name,
and carved a little note
out of my arm which always says
I'm sorry and love and sorry
over and over, each letter
spelling out my name, which, in the language
of last night means apologia,
or it means who do you think you are, you
are barely a man. All night
I wanted to sit at your table
and pour out the beer
into little Turkish bowls, and have all
the cuts that make up your body and mine
close up like a tulip in the dark and cooling front yard.


1     The Paris-American

Matthew Dickman is the poetry editor of Tin House and the author of  All-American Poem (American Poetry Review/ Copper Canyon Press, 2008)  and the recipient of the Honickman First Book Prize, the May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kate Tufts Award from Claremont College, the 2009 Oregon Book Award, and two fellowships from Literary Arts of Oregon. He has also received residencies and fellowships from The Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas; The Vermont Studio Center; The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; and The Lannan Foundation. His poems have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and the New Yorker, among others. W.W. Norton & Co. will publish his second book in 2012. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

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