• Home
  • Poetry
  • Archives
  • Past Events
    • Fall | 2012 Reading
    • Spring | 2013 Reading
    • Spring | 2014 Reading
    • Fall | 2015 Reading
    • Gallery
  • Submissions
    • General Submissions
    • The Paris-American Prize
  • About/Contact
  • Home
  • Poetry
  • Archives
  • Past Events
    • Fall | 2012 Reading
    • Spring | 2013 Reading
    • Spring | 2014 Reading
    • Fall | 2015 Reading
    • Gallery
  • Submissions
    • General Submissions
    • The Paris-American Prize
  • About/Contact


MATTHEW ZAPRUDER

Your Eyes are the Color of a Light Bulb Floating in the
Potomac River

Just when it is time to say goodbye

I think I am finally understanding the light bulb

but not milk or NAFTA or for that matter paper money

let's not even get into my stovetop coffee maker

I don't even get how this book is fastened or why that orchid 

seems happier or at least its petals a little whiter

when it is placed right up against the window

or how certain invisible particles 
 
leave the wall and enter the cord and somehow make the radio 

make the air become

Moonlight Sonata or Neighborhood  #3

basically a lamp is a mechanism 
 
to shove too many electrons into a coil 
 
or filament a light bulb i.e. a vacuum surrounds

the first filament was made in 1802 out of platinum

as soon as it was made to glow the air 
 
took the electrons away 
 
which left it charred like a tiny bonfire

just like ones we have all seen when we squint and hold the glass bulb 

that no longer glows when we flip the switch

I wonder if my fear this morning sitting in the dark and listening to music 
 
is anything like the inventor of the telephone growing deaf 

and knowing all those poles and wires were starting to cover the land

and someday everyone would be able to get exactly what they want




36   The Paris-American

Picture
Matthew Zapruder is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Come On All You Ghosts, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Currently a Guggenheim Fellow, he is an editor for Wave Books, and teaches at UCR-Palm Desert's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. He lives in San Francisco.

   
   Next week's poet:

 Olivia Clare
Picture
The Paris-American
Copyright © 2025 The
Paris-American
   About • Contact • Submit • Archives • Support