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Marin Poetry Center Writing Retreat

May 5, 2020 | Filed under: Marin Poetry Center Writing Retreat, Writing Prompt

Poem on the Occasion of a Weekly Staff Meeting

By Matthew Zapruder

Across the deep eternal sky
a thousand changing shapes flit by,

i.e. clouds, or so I have always called them.
But how is it I have never

among my incessant coffee refills
and insectivorous travels

among the cubicles in search
of individual wrapped chocolates

and conversations asked you
if you in my heart detect

several as I do in yours
of the adorable qualities 

of broken folding chairs?
Or why we build desired outcomes

on the spots where old ones stood?
I call this meeting to order:

item one let’s go to lunch and order
wild boar. Let’s have an old-world chat

about the original action items.
O fuck the fluting on the donuts!

I feel totally Anglo Saxon!
I want for once in my life to whip

around an actual halberd gleaming
in the sun and win

a great victory versus the air!
Here is my project update:

the file cabinet is watching
over the particles

safely asleep in a beam,
and nothing into our building

has at last so gently crashed
leaving us bored and fortunate.

I move our faces
around this highly polished table

to each other look
almost familiar

so let us slip into the light
blue sleeve this afternoon

so gracefully carries
the next few hours in

and together forget
what our great task is. 

Oakland Transit (before Shelter-in-Place)

Craft: One thing that brings me back to poetry when I feel like I’ve drifted away, is to read a poem first thing in the morning or the last thing at night. Yesterday morning, I opened Matthew Zapruder’s newest book Father’s Day and read this poem. I love the intensity and energy of these lines. The way beauty is a turn, a contrast, a realization that can happen anywhere within life’s mundane and ordinary details.  

Prompt: Write a manifesto with all of your might. Tell us what you live and die for.  

Step 1) Write a letter of forgiveness to inanimate object.  

Step 2) Write a letter about how you failed to be noble. 

Step 3) Write a list of things you plan to do between now and sunrise. 

Step 4) After these three steps, write the manifesto from scratch in one go. 

Journal: You don’t have time to submit this manifesto to a journal. Print it and pin it to your front door. 

Recipe: A manifesto deserves something decadent, extreme, and way bigger than appropriate: Salted Chocolate Pudding with Whipped Sour Cream. 

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