Tag: Cathleen Cohen

Two Poems by Cathleen Cohen

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Snakes

My friend sculpted a cobra from vacuum hose,
encrusted its coils with marbles:
cat’s eyes, comets, sunbursts,
even a chipped Joseph’s coat.

It took months to plaster the snake’s hood,
embed ball bearings eyes
and rim them with gold acrylic.
She wants me to lift it up

so I can feel the casings
texturing its skin. She tells
how she drove to the shooting range
down on Oregon Street, floors swelling

with shells. Can I picture
how thick they were on the floor?
Like wading through water,
flood from a burst pipe.

What fear might call anyone
into that place to sharpen
their anger, their aim?
Last week, a box of bullets fell

from a fourth grader’s coat
in the class next to mine.
We teachers raced to retrieve them
snaking under desks.

*

Tethered

An injured hawk is carried into art class.
Warned not to speak or make
sharp gestures, we gaze

as the handler lifts a black cloth
covering the cage.
Within, the hawk quakes

as the handler unknots
a rope and ties it to his wrist.
We shiver

as the hawk shivers,
scans the room, swivels
his bright head to stare

with yellow eyes, shocked.
He doesn’t regard us
but seems in an instant

to take our measure,
map space
between our bodies’ horizontals

as if he could escape,
as if his wing
had knitted and healed.

We are not trees in the open,
not wind, although our sticks
of charcoal rishrush

as we scribble on paper,
trying to capture one flicker,
the lift of one feather.

*

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. Her poems appear in various journals and her poetry collections are: Camera Obscura ( 2017), Etching the Ghost (2021) and Sparks and Disperses (2021). Her paintings are on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery (www.ceruleanarts.com) and www.cathleencohenart.com.

Blurred Sky by Cathleen Cohen

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Flowering Cherry by Cathleen Cohen

Blurred Sky
       For Peter

Sky swoons
as gray as old slate boards

or stones on graves.
Forsythia flash caution

against massed clouds,
backdrop to mourning.

Our brother evanesced
this day, decades back.

Shouldn’t grief mute?

A weeping cherry jostles
center stage, like a bridesmaid,

intent on the bouquet.
The neighbors planted it

when their daughter was born,
frothy hybrid, always flouncing.

Each year I try and fail
to paint its blooms

against insistent spring light.
Maybe this year

I can bear to see it clearly
against a blurred sky.

*

Author’s Note:

Our brother, Peter Krueger, died of AIDS at age 32 in the early days of the epidemic, in the spring of 1988. A talented man who loved life and art, he was an expert in European furniture at Christie’s auction house. Spurred by love for him, our family worked to build a clinic in his name at Beth Israel Mt Sinai in NYC for those with HIV. Each spring I write poems in his memory. He is always with me.

*

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A poet, painter and teacher, she created the We the Poets program for children (www.theartwell.org.) Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, North of Oxford, One Art Journal, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review, Rogue Agent and Toho Journal. She authored Camera Obscura (Moonstone Press, 2017), Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press, 2021) and Sparks and Disperses (Cornerstone Press, 2021.) Her artwork is on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery (www.ceruleanarts.com) and www.cathleencohenart.com.

She Named This Drawing for Me by Cathleen Cohen

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She Named This Drawing for Me

For Tilda

She drove a block to my backyard, having lost
her zest for weighty easels and oils.
Chemo drained her

so she brought a thin pad and array
of micron pens, said she was reclaiming
her old practice of making artists’ books,

which her daughter glued together
with archival paper. Pale as paper,
she perched on a bench

and mapped the landscape:
overgrown hedge and trellis,
empty of clematis.

Such elegant blue lines.
She wasn’t sure if her strength
would last all afternoon.

I asked how she knew
where to start her compositions.
Plucking green from her bouquet of pens,

she said… one spot
that catches the eye,
that’s pleasing.

This thermos on the picnic table,
this bright woven carry-all
shouting to be orange.

That day, she stayed
only an hour and now
I own this drawing,

filled with grace and elegant lines,
with everything we said
and didn’t say.

*

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, North of Oxford, Passager, One Art Poetry, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review, Rogue Agent, Camera Obscura (Moonstone Press, 2017) and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press, 2021).

After a Mass Shooting by Cathleen Cohen

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After a Mass Shooting

Frantic. No names
have been released, you scour

the air for electrical flow
between loved ones. No

spirits touch your face.
How much pain

can a day contain
until the vessel bursts?

No telling how many fell,
their days, like grass.

You pace and pray
for resource

until he calls, his voice
assuring he wasn’t there

in that moment.
But things tilt.

Wounds arrive so often
they can’t be bandaged

or peeled off
like days on a desk calendar,

paper squares let loose.
So many were felled,

their days, like grass.
Winds pass through

but this place won’t forget.
This is not a psalm.

*

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, North of Oxford, Passager, One Art Poetry, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review, Rogue Agent, Camera Obscura (Moonstone Press, 2017) and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press, 2021).

Space by Cathleen Cohen

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Space

My son planes planks
then checks for splinters.
He’s building a desk with old factory salvage,
boards that once supported

machines, grime, men’s weight
for so long that now
they’re as yellow as egg yolks
flecked with red.

He used to drift through parties
when young, leave the table
to search for carved mantles,
crown moldings, curlicues and corbels.

I’d find him
stroking the grain, the artistry.
Now I bring sandwiches,
sit near the scant warmth

of his plug-in heater
and consider the view:
panorama, a mosaic
of high-rises and rooftops,

windows like tiles reflecting
soft movements of humans.
I used to have
my own studio space.

I’d paint abstracts
and hold day long conversations
with crimson and ultra blue,
make marks with charcoal sticks,

catch lyrics. To paint portraits,
I invite souls in
to sit near the windows
so they could feel a little freer.

*

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, One Art, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review and Rogue Agent. Camera Obscura (chapbook, Moonstone Press), appeared in 2017 and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press), is forthcoming in 2021. She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her paintings are on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery (www.ceruleanarts.com).

Plein Air by Cathleen Cohen

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Plein Air

I hover in the folds,
uncap paints, brush
swirls of membranous time.

Losses get caught
in the net, hard little seeds.

Last month four of my loved ones died.
Few want to hear
so I stand at corners and paint.

People don’t mind
painters at easels, almost
part of the landscape ourselves.
Shadows sweep across lawns.

A man in a red mask
approaches with his son, also masked.
They stand at safe distance and don’t

ask questions.
Soon they move off, bumping shoulders.

I’m not spying, really,
just sketching with brushstrokes and line,
just trying to piece the landscape together.

*

Previously appeared in Cagibi

*

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review, Rogue Agent, Camera Obscura (Moonstone Press, 2017) and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press, forthcoming 2021). She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her artwork is on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery (www.ceruleanarts.com).