In the Silk City, seventeen-year-old Jennie Bosschieter makes ribbons inside a factory. Men work the vats of the neighboring dye houses, coloring so many miles of silk thread that they could connect Paterson, New Jersey, to the Netherlands, the country where Jennie was born, thousands of times and still leave enough to spare for the …
As hollow as a gutted fish, a hole in the sand, a cistern cracked along the seam— There is no filling such emptiness. And yet— Stitch it shut. Pour and pour, if you wish. Wish and wish, but it’s wasted— Water carried to the garden in your cupped palms. Might as well seal an ember …
At a bar, a man says Love the hair, says it’sthe best hair, baby. I’m Republican but would totally go liberal for you.At a gas station, a man’s Damn girl, those titsknocks me into the pump and I, too, canbe machine. Shudder. Waiting for use. Tick. Queue.*When I was young, in our basement, where Africahung …
What was done was done in our names; we ourselves would never have done what was done to anyone. We wanted to be good, polite, obedient, fun, wanted only not to ever ask What have we done? And yet, in our names, what was done was done. See more poems from Issue 15.1 by …
I In the summer of 1955, at the tender age of fourteen, I ran away to sea. The vessel upon which I staked my escape was a fifty-two-foot yawl captained by an Episcopal bishop, Thomas Gulliver Mayhew, the descendant of missionaries, a wise and gentle man who was also, as is sometimes the case, a …
for Gary Snyder Come out the brake into the face of the hill—the full spill of sunglare hazes dust into air arcades & down -drift. A scattering of snap- dragons points up. Seven thousand feet, & cattle low in the field, steam things amidst a morning veil, a cloud liquefying upon their backs. This …
Leonard hadn’t seen his only child since the night ten years ago when he pulled her out of a flaming car. His wife had been dead for a week and he’d been tired for years, but as Leonard pulled Leslie from the fire, he felt strong. He could barely remember that feeling now, any more …
—yes;some of us believed his speech could quell the sea just by reaching out palms-out, guiding tides, a la Moses the Mad. And as if His hands held up to the water, then, were like magnets repelling other, like magnets, He conquered the storm with magic, others of us said, if looked at more closely, …
My beast made of gold is my vocation; it walks with me and makes a peaceable sound. It has no wings and it has no clay. I never touch it, if I can help it—though sometimes, knocked roughly, I brush it by accident. That is when the pain comes and the great poems cover their …
By the time we’d built the hand- rail, the hand had vanished— but still there was a sky to rail at. See more poems from Andrea Cohen by purchasing Issue 14.2 in our online store. Digital copies only $5.
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