I like to be alone in someone else's house,
practicing my cosmic long distance wink.
I send it out toward a mirror
some distracted bored cosmonaut dropped
on an asteroid hurtling vastly
closer to our star. No one watches
me watching thousands
of television hours, knitting
a golden bobcat out of
tiny golden threadlets. These good
lonely days every thing
I've claimed I've seen
for me to use it glows.
I'm waiting for the love
of Alice Ghostley, who keeps
in various faces and guises
appearing amid the plot machines,
always to someone more beautiful
and central in complex futile relation.
They call her plain but to me her name
sounds full of distant messages
beamed a thousand years ago,
only now to flower. Penultimate
cigarette, high desert breezes,
I've written all my plans and vows
on careful scraps of paper piled
beneath weirdly heavy little black rocks
I gathered on many slow walks
into town to ask no one who
would bother naming this particular
time between later afternoon
and twilight. Crazed bee, I know
the name of the plant you are in!
Salvia! Also, the jay is not blue,
nor the sky or indigo bunting,
within particles and feathers sun
gets lost making expert holographers
out of us all. Passarina, I saw
your dull blaze from the railing flash
and an insect disappeared. Afternoon
once again slipped into
the gas station like it did those old
days it had a body that moved
and smoked among the people,
whistling a cowboy song concerning
long shadows, happy and unfree.


About this poem
"I began this poem quite a few years ago when I was living in Marfa, Texas, but it never felt finished to me. Only recently was I able to finally figure it out.

"Alice Ghostley (1924 - 2007) was a 'character actor' and sidekick in many well-known television series, including 'Bewitched' and 'Designing Women.'"
-Matthew Zapruder

About Matthew Zapruder
Matthew Zapruder is the author of "Sun Bear" (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). He teaches at Saint Mary's College, is an editor-at-large at Wave Books, and lives in Oakland, Calif.

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(c) 2015 Matthew Zapruder. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate