Read Come on All You Ghosts for Free Online Page A

motion.

    5

    Come on all you ghosts.
    Bring me your lucky numbers
    that failed you, bring me

    your boots made of the skin
    of placid animals
    who stood for a while in the snow.

    Bring me your books
    made of blue sky
    stitched together with thread

    made of the memory
    of how warm
    even the most terrible

    among us has felt
    the skin of his or her beloved
    in the morning to be.

    Come on all you ghosts,
    try to make me forget
    one summer lost

    in a reservoir and another
    I keep in my chest.
    Come on all you ghosts,

    try to make me repeat
    the most terrible thing I said
    to someone and I will

    if the mind of that someone
    could ever be eased.
    Come on let’s vote

    for no one in the election
    of who is next to die.
    Come on all you ghosts,

    I know you can hear me,
    I know you are here,
    I have heard you cough

    and sigh when I pretend
    I do not believe
    I have to say something important.

    Probably no one will die
    of anything I say.
    Probably no one will live

    even a second longer.
    Is that true?
    Come on all you ghosts,

    you can tell me now,
    I have seen one of you becoming
    and I am no longer afraid,

    just sad for everyone
    but also happy this morning I woke
    next to the warm skin

    of my beloved. I do not know
    what terrible marvels
    tomorrow will bring

    but ghosts if I must join you
    you and I know
    I have done my best to leave

    behind this machine
    anyone with a mind
    who cares can enter.

About the Author

    Matthew Zapruder is the author of two previous collections of poetry,
American Linden
(Tupelo Press, 2002) and
The Pajamaist
(Copper Canyon Press, 2006).
The Pajamaist
was selected by Tony Hoagland as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and was chosen by
Library Journal
as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. He is also co-translator from Romanian, with historian Radu Ioanid, of
Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems of Eugen Jebeleanu
(Coffee House Press, 2008). German and Slovene-language editions of his poems have been published by Lux-books and Šerpa Editions; in 2009, Luxbooks also published a separate German-language graphic-novel version of the poem “The Pajamaist.” A collaborative book with painter Chris Uphues,
For You in Full Bloom,
was published by Pilot Books in 2009. His work has appeared in many anthologies, including
Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll; Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century; Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything; and The Best American Poetry 2009.

    He has been a Lannan Literary Fellow in Marfa, Texas, and a recipient of a May Sarton prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in San Francisco.

Books by Matthew Zapruder
    Come On All You Ghosts
    The Pajamaist
    American Linden

    Links
    https://matthewzapruder.wordpress.com

Acknowledgments

    I would like to thank the editors of the following publications, in which poems in this book (some in different forms) first appeared:
Agriculture Reader, Article, The Awl, Bat City Review, The Believer, Black Clock, Boston Review, Coconut, Columbia Poetry Review, CUNY GC Advocate, Dædalus, Electronic Poetry Review, Forklift Ohio, Fourteen Hills, Free Inquiry, jubilat, The Laurel Review, Lit Mob, Maggy, Mary, The Massachusetts Review, Narrative, The New York Quarterly, notnostrums, Order and Decorum, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Flash, A Public Space, Puppy-flowers, Slate, Tin House, Volt, Zyzzyva.

    â€œNever to Return” was reprinted in
The Best American Poetry 2009,
edited by David Lehman and David Wagoner. “Sad News” appeared in
Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days,
edited by Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker.

    Several of the poems in this book first appeared in
For You in Full Bloom,
a limited-edition book from Pilot Books containing reproduc- tions of paintings by Chris Uphues. Special thanks to