January 2005

A Poem by Matthew Thorburn

In Lansing

Thorburg

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Black coffee, for starters, and sun

sneaking through a scribble

of cloud. Holidays over and still

in from out east: you and me,

Kay, and cold day-old light-

dishwater or thereabouts. And pale,

the sky through these trees, blue

that's almost not blue; a bird's egg

or as if colors were verbs-

Oranging, bluing -and you hadn't

said blue. Who loves January?

You see the steeple but the bell's

still broken, half-shined with ice.

And someone has to unplug

and take down these tangled strings

of lights, get the hose to spray

the salt off the Buick.

Three fingers of grass show up

through the snow. This is

hope? They're brown and yellow,

dying or dead. Couldn't

we cover all this more happily

in a kitcheny little still life? Freckled

bananas, fuzzy cheek of a peach,

the colander and the cheese

grater and the cheese?

Any waxy red wheel will do.

But already you've got

that look, like wherever you are

you wish you're someplace else-

though specific or

otherwise, you don't say. I say

I love how snow falls

on gray snow. And at night

you can see the stars here,

but really, how long do you want

to look at stars? If you say it

and say it and say it, even happy

sounds meaningless. Or sad or sorry

or sublime. My favorite word is now.

No, now my favorite word is

the one you're about to say.

"Wish is a funny word," you say,

pouring coffee. "You don't

hear it much anymore. Must be

we all got what we wanted."

Matthew Thorburn '97 was a two-time Hopwood Award winner at Michigan. Western Michigan University published his first volume of poetry, Subject to Change, last year. Contact www.wmich.edu/newissues for availability.

Thorburn received his MFA from the New School in New York City, where he is a business development writer for the Greenberg Traurig law firm.

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