Friday, June 22, 2018

The Sunday Poet: Wyn Cooper

Wyn Cooper
Wyn Cooper has published five books of poems, most recently Mars Poetica. His work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Slate, and more than 100 other magazines, as well as in 25 anthologies of contemporary poetry. His poems have been turned into songs by Sheryl Crow, David Broza, and Madison Smartt Bell. He has taught at Bennington College, Marlboro College, the University of Utah, and at The Frost Place, and has given readings throughout the United States as well as in Europe and South America. He is a former editor of Quarterly West, and the recipient of a fellowship from the Ucross Foundation. He worked for two years at the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, a think tank run by the Poetry Foundation, and now lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, where he works as a freelance editor.





Drummer  

A bass drum’s beat
wakes her in the night.
She goes to the window,
looks out and sees nothing,
but the pounding continues.

She hears her heart
above the noise of fans,
crickets, the refrigerator
that keeps her wine cold
as the night she met him.

He didn’t look like a drummer
or act like one, no hands
beating time on the table
in the tiny dark bar           
he took her to twice.

Time waits for no one,
he said, and she thought
Stones but didn’t say it,
just played it straight
as he sang her praises.

He never called back,
just sent a postcard
that said Still drumming.

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