Another Gift
Here’s something I
have two of, someone
said, which meant
much, and then
someone without
a word handed
me the one
thing she had—
and I could
barely, in my one
head, hold it.
Matinee
Performing love is what
she said. It was the first
time I’d heard the
expression, and the first
time is special—
you want, at first,
to bow or curtsy,
to listen for applause,
for the mercy
of a curtain.
Vernacular
I heard those words
early on—don’t
give her the satisfaction—
and didn’t know what
that meant, what
satisfaction looked
like, so I held on
to everything, which
is the opposite—this
heft—of contentment.
Monday
The day they
were taking her
from hospital to
hospice, the night
nurse said,
Thursday’s my
day off. If she’s
still there then,
I'll visit. Where
else would she
be, I thought—not
yet comprehending
what every night
nurse knows.
Sunset
That was a red
flag and all
I could do
was run to it.
How Sound Travels
You said goodbye and I
heard good and I, and
only later, the buzzing
b, its lethal sting.
Dark Days
Hegel said that happiness
consists of history’s blank
pages—and the revisionists,
unhappy with the brilliance
of nothing, keep scribbling.
Domestic
A man stands accused
of shooting at the moon—
which was naked and
out at such an hour.
Andrea Cohen's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her sixth collection, Nightshade, will be out this year with Four Way Books. Recent books include Unfathoming and Furs Not Mine. Cohen directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Writers House at Merrimack College.