Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer is the author of A HUMMOCK IN THE MALOOKAS, SATELLITE, A GREEN LIGHT, RISE UP and A PLATE OF CHICKEN. With Joshua Beckman he wrote NICE HAT. THANKS and recorded the audio CD ADVENTURES WHILE PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY. With Joshua Beckman and Anthony McCann he wrote the secret book GENTLE READER! It is not for sale. Octopus Books published his action/adventure chapbook-length poem THEY ALL SEEMED ASLEEP in 2008. He teaches in the creative writing program at NYU and lives in Brooklyn.

WHAT IS MORE DISTRACTING THAN CLOUDS

Everything is more distracting than the clouds

they are never there they move

on no one can say remember that

cloud we saw in college it’s still

there let’s go see it again they

walk their dogs in the park they

raise the plastic shade on the airplane

window and see a low region surrounded

by thin peaks all of it unreal

white needle shaped mountains like a scroll

of Chinese painting a landscape not even

imagined which disappears when the plane flies

through it and emerges in the blue

air over the monotonous sorghum fields below

and everything changes a diet coke sprays

open the distracting flight attendant glides past

but the clouds continue to gather they 

fail and dissipate they come from the

east where the sea makes them foam

up or they come from the west

full of ragweed and pollen too small

to see everyone breathes it all day

distracted by a song a friend sings

over and over white miraculous shifts overhead

the clouds reflected in the surface of

a cocktail completely ignored drink and cloud

ignored while a woman takes her clothes

off in front of a man who

smiles intermittently shaded by the passing helicopter’s

rotors tearing up the stratus clouds and

flinging now her shirt at him rain

falling in her almost unnaturally light blue

eyes when he looks closely reflected there

in the morning the whole sky is

a lusty pink lamp turned on a

little girl stands open-mouthed in her pajamas

she is his daughter it is five

o’clock in the morning the city still

sleeps the clouds fly out to sea

how many people saw them this morning

later the government uses its Confuse Ray

on its citizens who turn their backs

on the leaves and insects who turn

their faces to the light of their

rooms when the clouds are the color

and shape of flaming brigantines gone up

in a dark harbor but they’re distracted

from the mares’ tails if they looked

up they’d see there’s nothing to be

afraid of a high pressure system is

moving in the air is cooler now

the sky is a mild blue something

has changed

I lOVE TO RISE ON A SUMMER MORN

I like to get up early

in the summer

and lie beneath the trees

waiting for the fruit to fall

pretending to live a gentle life

of ethereal mildness

I stare at the tufts of grass

until they appear holy, or speak

I wonder if the girls are mad

at me – the house is silent