By the time we’d built
the handrail, the hand
had vanished—
yet still there was
a sky to rail at.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
Eternity has closed its doors—
good riddance! I didn’t want
forever forever—just this
pear tree, branches
backlit and the fruits
I can’t get to.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
We build these
into the dream-
house, holes drilled
into window sills,
so rainy days
drain out. No
dream’s complete
without looking
ahead, without
seeing ourselves
looking back
at whom—
dreaming—
we’d been.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
Too long at the fair, the song
laments. No one sings
of hanging around too
long at the hospital.
Someone kept getting
stale coffee in paper
cups, someone kept
punching a vending
machine, as if another
hour might come out.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
We funnel it between the stones.
What stones become is what
holds them together. A crushing
summer: white hydrangeas, in
dry winds, nod. In Adirondacks
we can’t fix, in a twilight beyond
repair, we recline, and an orange
tanager—which you asked
someone to come back
as—lights and vanishes.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
Evenings we sit in the living
room, together. Friday I take
my mother’s slot (noon)
at the beauty salon. Ruth,
who for forty years washed
her hair, washes mine.
We’re all in the desert
together. Your mother
liked the water cold,
Ruth says: news to me.
From a thousand
mouths, our dead assemble.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
You’ve seen
skies like that
before or after
storms—as if
thugs could beat
even the idea
of milk
money from them.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
after Ani Gjika
No one I love was taken
into the woods and shot,
you said. You said
this in a meadow
of a dress and kept
on talking and all
I saw was a forest,
all I heard was one
clean shot and no
one—toward the dear
clearing—running.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
So you pulled
them up. What
cobbler made
those shoes
and whose
hands, asking
nothing, gave
them to you?
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
The bars insist
they don’t belong
in prison. We’re not
even bars, they say.
We’re stripes pried
from a zebra’s back.
No one listens—not
the guards and not
petitions. No one
listens until a number
comes along insisting
he’s a man, and
without a crop or
saddle, on seven
stripes rides off.
from EverythingFind more by Andrea Cohen at the library
Copyright © 2021 Andrea Cohen
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.
