Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer was born in 1970 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and grew up in Michigan, Alabama, and Oklahoma. He holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Boston Review, Conduit, Crowd, Open City, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, and a journal made out of a matchbook called Matchbook. His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas (W.W. Norton, 1995), was a 1994 National Poetry Series selection. His other books include Satellite (Verse, 2001) and A Green Light (Verse, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin International Poetry Prize. With poet Joshua Beckman, Rohrer collaborated on the book of poems Nice Hat. Thanks (Verse, 2002) and released an audio CD of their live collaborations, Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (Verse, 2003). Rohrer is a founding member of the journal Fence, and served as one of its poetry editors until 2005. He writes, “For the past five years I have been an Adjunct Instructor at the New School while also holding various unpleasant full-time jobs. I live in Brooklyn and besides teaching adjunct courses, I am a full time stay at home dad for a two-year-old. I am fully domesticated.”

Childhood Stories

They learned to turn off the gravity in an auditorium

and we all rose into the air,

the same room where they demonstrated

pow-wows and prestidigitation.

But not everyone believed it.

That was the most important lesson

I learned—that a truck driven by a dog

could roll down a hill at dusk

and roll right off a dock into a lake

and sink, and if no one believes you

then what is the point

of telling them wonderful things?

I walked home from the pow-wow

on an early winter night in amazement:

they let me buy the toy tomahawk!

As soon as I got home I was going

to hit my sister with it, but I didn’t know this.

from The World at Night

I went out one night with people from work

to an editor’s apartment. I drank

a glass of poison. She served me poison

and everyone else was either immune

or politely refused. In the subway

I didn’t know the meanings of any words

and my sweat stung me. People on the car

pushed me off at the next stop when I puked

in my hands. Without any meaning, time

accreted to things in funny shapes—old,

asymmetrical hobbledehoys

tormented me, a stern but benevolent

lizard gave me counsel. My stomach contents

spilled around me. My mind was actually

seven or eight minds, all but one of them

composed of helicopters. The other one

was sad. Satellites could tell I was sad.

When another subway came I crawled on

and technically I passed into death, but

passed through and awoke at Coney Island

and saw black cowboys galloping on the beach.

Hungry, mentally defeated, I stared

at The World’s Largest Rat—for fifty cents.

Really, it was only the same color

as a rat. “It’s from the same family,”

the barker explained. I felt vulnerable

illuminated by neon and fried light.

Everyone had to use one big toilet

and the sky was orange with satellites.

And satellites know everything.

My Government

The history of the world

is the history of rural malcontents

rising up against the capital.

Each night I hear something scratching

to get in my fortress

which can only hold out so long.

The cat thinks something lives in the radiator

and puts his mouth to the vent—its breath.

No man is an island. Also, no one is interested

in excessive indeterminacy. The French

will eat the horse right out from under you. That,

and so much more, have you taught me, World.

Your products will collapse after a short time

and we will be forced into the streets for more.

It is possible to live only on what you grow yourself

if you eat little and lie very still.

We Never Should Have Stopped at Pussy Island

There is this desire to resurrect

the young grandfather

in his salt-stained fatigues,

but the fatigue of even pretending

to accompany him on the troopship

across the flat pale oceans

of the world sinks me

into the depths of the deep green couch.

There he was—riding into Manila

in the back of a jeep to restore communications,

surrounded by topless women

running non-stop in circles around him.

Huge American planes lay fallen

into the very buildings

they had been attacking.

There was no stopping this thing.

In the photographs on the kitchen table

I look down the barrels of the ladies’

enormous dark areolas.

He never took off his boots there.

This heat presses me against the floor.

In Manila, long ago,

his sweat dissolved his clothes.

My wife is wearing his fatigues

tonight, and no bra; she is his size,

smooth and skinny legs.

They had to fuck up that whole island

to get it back and they were glad to have it.

The cows there were thinner than ours,

and hated both sides equally.

Boys were getting their bones ripped out

by bombs but it was also a safer time

to be alive—my grandfather’s troopship

just swerved all over the sea and they were safe,

the enemy couldn’t find them,

the only ones who knew where they were

were covered in scales, and the truth

could not be got from them.

And every move they made was a secret.

We do not know if they stopped

at any particular island.

The heat here turns into hot rain

as it did on his head

and the eviscerated boys

from Charlevoix blown back

into the trees. We do not know

why he did not call home, when he returned.

I do not even know what goes on

in the apartment upstairs.

We only know what the Army censors tell us.

Some boys simply disappeared,

never to wear ankle-high leather boots

with zippers, never to wake up

on a day that those were in fashion.