Matt Sumpter
Before You Are Born
After Louise Glück
Before you are born, you walk,
though no one has taught you how.
You walk through fields harrowed soft
by wind, through browning woods
where flowers, earthbound and spectral,
rise out of wet grass. None of this
belongs to you, nor you to it.
The dirt huddles in, warming itself.
Clouds cipher to each other across
the above--a bird, an arrow, a fist--
as if to say, We have been so many things.
More and more, you know something
will happen that will change you.
The humid afternoon turns to rain,
and you hope for a world filled with
so little ceremony, so much song.
You make yourself a promise
you cannot keep: you will remember
how it felt to live this first, endless time,
watching your reflection in river water,
then watching it drift away, taken up
into the acres of trees, miles of harvest.
When storms arrive, your voice
murmurs in the leaves.
In Utero: 27 Weeks
One day your hands could comb through sea grass
comb through my hair you could be any size at all
your chest expands ribs pressing outward
like the skin of a succulent the doctors say you are
practicing breathing one day I think your hands
could separate yolks from an egg your ears
could be deaf you could open our door in the night
and whisper beneath the sound of the radiators
the world drowns you out now though I promise
we listen and wait you could swim under bridges
put on old records The Four Seasons The Four Tops
and feel the vinyl spin under your hand you could
never be anyone but this ripe weight suspended
in dark fluid this person with this spine
this thin temple of ribs we watch flex these hands
that make us gasp as you rub at the eyes
you can now start to open and close for us
two people who understood the body until now
Matt Sumpter’s first book of poems, Public Land was just released from the University of Tampa Press. Poems have appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, Best New Poets 2014, Ninth Letter, THRUSH, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. A PhD recipient in Creative Writing from Binghamton University, his fiction is forthcoming in Glimmer Train, and he is the Lead Narrative Designer for the Adventure/Fitness app, MarchQuest. He teaches academic and creative writing at Rutgers University.
Return to May 2018 Edition
After Louise Glück
Before you are born, you walk,
though no one has taught you how.
You walk through fields harrowed soft
by wind, through browning woods
where flowers, earthbound and spectral,
rise out of wet grass. None of this
belongs to you, nor you to it.
The dirt huddles in, warming itself.
Clouds cipher to each other across
the above--a bird, an arrow, a fist--
as if to say, We have been so many things.
More and more, you know something
will happen that will change you.
The humid afternoon turns to rain,
and you hope for a world filled with
so little ceremony, so much song.
You make yourself a promise
you cannot keep: you will remember
how it felt to live this first, endless time,
watching your reflection in river water,
then watching it drift away, taken up
into the acres of trees, miles of harvest.
When storms arrive, your voice
murmurs in the leaves.
In Utero: 27 Weeks
One day your hands could comb through sea grass
comb through my hair you could be any size at all
your chest expands ribs pressing outward
like the skin of a succulent the doctors say you are
practicing breathing one day I think your hands
could separate yolks from an egg your ears
could be deaf you could open our door in the night
and whisper beneath the sound of the radiators
the world drowns you out now though I promise
we listen and wait you could swim under bridges
put on old records The Four Seasons The Four Tops
and feel the vinyl spin under your hand you could
never be anyone but this ripe weight suspended
in dark fluid this person with this spine
this thin temple of ribs we watch flex these hands
that make us gasp as you rub at the eyes
you can now start to open and close for us
two people who understood the body until now
Matt Sumpter’s first book of poems, Public Land was just released from the University of Tampa Press. Poems have appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, Best New Poets 2014, Ninth Letter, THRUSH, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. A PhD recipient in Creative Writing from Binghamton University, his fiction is forthcoming in Glimmer Train, and he is the Lead Narrative Designer for the Adventure/Fitness app, MarchQuest. He teaches academic and creative writing at Rutgers University.
Return to May 2018 Edition