Julia Cohen
Hot Cold
4 lemons for a dollar I skirt down the avenue saying 'close to my
hurt' not looking at a visible object say my name three times and
what happens
So much of it and now nothing
The heart's muscle tattooed on her back like a fish fin’s fake
eye when she said composure I heard enclosure and clamored out and
away to my gangly limbs waiting in the meadow for a good risk she
cooks chicken for the wishbone wish I wash away like the cup's
coffee ring 'for chance's sake'
My hands come back to me in the 24 hour bodega the clerk hands me
free cigarettes I never smoke but take them anyways as bricks for my
castle
What is most important to you cannot be alphabetized
is touch a visible thing? there is no such thing as opposites
surprised? you shouldn't be everything its own animal
She took my typewriter ribbon to wrap the present I never find
Cold colder getting warmer cold again
Julia Cohen lives in Brooklyn and is the
Marketing Director for Nightboat Books (we just published Fanny
Howe's new poetry book), a fiction reader for Small Spiral
Notebook, and an editorial assistant at Palgrave Macmillan.
Her poems have been published in Can We Have Our Ball Back?,
How2, Hanging Loose, GutCult, Boog City,
Word For/Word and Pindeldyboz, and are forethcoming in
Octopus #7, H_NGM_N, The Tiny, and Aught.
Feel free to reach her at
Julia.Cohen@nightboat.org |