Julia Cohen

 

 

 

Earthen Box

 

Distance was my unbroken length

even binoculars could not cut. Fjord

 

landfill palisade. Threw eggs in

the ocean. Splints all over the body

 

I tried not to leave prints on items

and animals. Tried to consolidate

 

my shape with movement. I hid under

tree-hem and briar, memory came

 

from a photo I claimed. Here I saw

the creatures crawling, dirt shimmered

 

with worms. Unabashed the paper-trails,

entrails. I learned it is best to cup small

 

things and blow on them to build small

things and blow on them to light small

 

things and blow on them to surround

yourself with the ones who remind us

 

the good grow too, yolked to us.

 

 

 

 

A Glassjaw Grinding Legs

 

You tame the spider

with the back of your hand

 

You don't have to knock here

 

Our wallpaper is 

a bookshelf repeating

 

The spider perching near

dried apricots or plums or pears

 

I will never grow into you

 

There are only so many ways

to enter the room

 

This is how I eat the spider

No one knocks when leaving

 

 

 

 

Sea-Glass Rations  

 

Innuendo of fishing for pears,

resplendent and salty. An intimate

extraction. Cares come to dine  

 

to the tune of avarice. This is

where cars come to die. Extravagance

of spatial matter precipitating satire.  

 

Avoidance equals reverting to cracker

and juice. Escalators make a show

of existing. Transfer strangeness in suits  

 

above assimilating trees. Definitive: the squad

assassinated fire. Take the inverted

mountain with a safe dosage.  

 

How is your pillow? A villanelle

of gasoline and valentines. Reckless

of question, reckless but supplicant havoc.  

 

Bookended by two great ceremonies. To extricate

a cosmology of shoe and song. Initial refusal,

day of bootless battle. Supreme of the lark  

 

of the labor, a la mode and wanton.

Rein in the sea-glass, a purple

piece for every hour.