photo:sharon auberle

DESTINATION

by Cathryn Cofell

In my fantasy: 

Tuesday afternoon,

blinds drawn, covers kicked

to the floor, you and I

slick with sweat and oil,

bodies tight as earth and root.

I write secret words

on the sole of your left foot:

flame and temple and tether,

your hurricane face washed in genius,

your eyes wild on me,

your red, red lips on

the answers I long to hear.

In your fantasy:

morning birds peck

in an empty bath outside,

blinds wide open,

kitchen table, papers raked

to the floor, you and I

tumbling like rusty locks.

Words grind in your head:

flash and peacock and passport,

still fall into lines of pure genius

even as we steam the windows,

even as you bathe my long

pale body with lamplight and seed.

~ poem previously appeared in Sweet Curdle (Marsh River Editions)
   photo, in EVErywoman (Seven Islands Press)

HARD TRUTHS, STIFF DRINKS . . .

artwork: ralph murre

Hard Truths, Stiff Drinks and One Faithless Woman

by Cathryn Cofell

Endorphin-loving hellions of the world:    

your ride is here.

Hop on board the It Girl.

It Provocateur.  It Chameleon. It Hyphenate.

Crypto-literatus.

I am your backstage pass,

your ticket to the show. 

Form a line to the left; you must be at least

this tall to buckle into this cyber-chippy. 

Have you got it? 

The saucy fit? 

The Krispy Kreme?

The nine essential vitamins?

Blue collar, white collar, how about no collar?

How about the hip-hop,

the red dwarf,

the shimmy-lickin love shack?

How about a digitally-altered Keanu Reeves

bobbing like a plastic dog in my rear

window?  That’s the button,

the trigger, the real matrix. 

No room for sopranos or tarzans, skanks overboard:

you’ve been living in the dark ages

and I’m your only flashlight.

                         ~ previously appeared in Tiny Little Crushes (LockOut Press)

TRAPPED

TRAPPED

by Cathryn Cofell

You talk too much, your voice consumes the night.

It’s not your metaphors I want to have extended,

it’s your long legs on, over, around me like atoms,

it’s your work-stained hands igniting my atoms,

writing and re-writing the lines of my extended

body, not this language of the haunted and the night.

Your mouth has more important things to stir:

tongue me a haiku, tend me like a spring tree,

kiss me here and here to quiver, to burst.

Feel it?  I am a magnolia bud about to burst,

I am the ripe musk of a magnolia tree:

dig at my roots and all my branches will stir.

Enough with the words. Enough with the half names.

Don’t you know how wrong it is to call out other

loves in the dark naked clasp of my arms? This, yes,

is what brought us here—the patter, the meter, yes,

the recoil, but set them free outside now, another

prey wants ambush, begs you to pray my name.

~ first published in The Wisconsin Academy Review

JUNE 18, 2004

JUNE 18, 2004

by Cathryn Cofell

This is the day you wake

and say: Who are you

and why are you wearing

those ridiculous pajamas? 

What happened to the sexy nightie

girl who used to slither up in you,

whisper Nancy Sinatra songs

but not the one about the boots?

This is the day you fall

out of love with yourself,

that day you realize

you will have to come up with

the all-time best break-up line,

but even as you think it, you know

it will never happen;

you will never leave your wretched self.

You will stay and stay and take it,

become the someone you really are,

a sloshy, spineless thing, old

and whiny, the fat outcast in glasses,

she’s back from the milk carton,

she’s back.

~ previously appeared in Sweet Curdle (Marsh River Editions)

TRAPPED

digital negative: extreme detail -  street art, buenos aires

TRAPPED

by Cathryn Cofell

You talk too much, your voice consumes the night.

It’s not your metaphors I want to have extended,

it’s your long legs on, over, around me like atoms,

it’s your work-stained hands igniting my atoms,

writing and re-writing the lines of my extended

body, not this language of the haunted and the night.

Your mouth has more important things to stir:

tongue me a haiku, tend me like a spring tree,

kiss me here and here to quiver, to burst.

Feel it?  I am a magnolia bud about to burst,

I am the ripe musk of a magnolia tree:

dig at my roots and all my branches will stir.

Enough with the words. Enough with the half names.

Don’t you know how wrong it is to call out other

loves in the dark naked clasp of my arms? This, yes,

is what brought us here—the patter, the meter, yes,

the recoil, but set them free outside now, another

prey wants ambush, begs you to pray my name.

~ previously published in The Wisconsin Academy Review

WINTER'S END

photo: ralph murre

WINTER’S END

by Cathryn Cofell

So this is March. 

So this is why we forgive

the unforgiving state.

We turn our melting faces

to the sky and forget

about extra wool blankets

and surrendering to Arizona.

Yet, still the sun sputters

and still Christmas lights hang

and still the air is

as we are still

waiting for winter

to pass.

We are Caesar,

betrayed by the warmth

of friends and days

without heavy jackets. 

Undaunted

uncertain

of the dull knife of weather

we remain

still

that same crazy blade of grass

that forces through

the bitter ice each year

and grins.

 ~ previously appeared in the Aurorean 

December, Wisconsin 1988

photo: ralph murre

December, Wisconsin 1988

by Cathryn Cofell

(1)

The village turned the landfill last

week, but we barely notice the stench. 

The air feels bicycle and basketball,

the last chunks of leaves

still clinging like ex-lovers.

Bare feet against the porch window,

we sip Greek wine, listen

with wicked grins to our sweaters

pound against the locked

cedar chest in the hall.

(2)

In the chapel, a girls’ choir so clear

the ceiling tiles weep.  One possum girl

on the end, all pigtails and glasses,

faints a little. She is so out

of place she could be ours

if we had one.  Midnight,

the cats fight over the manger

and Mary is lost.  We pick up pieces,

check for cuts in dark places.

(3)

Donation boxes cringe half empty;

can you hear their bellies rumble? 

The mall overflows and the streets

overflow and the hospitals overflow,

but tomorrow the phone could ring,

a sister or cousin with news. 

Gifts wrapped in silver and cinnamon,

cookies bundled in cellophane, 

possibility like the touch of a small hand,

certain to take hold before snow.

~ first published in the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar

TEEING OFF

TEEING OFF
by Cathryn Cofell

She tells me to pick up golf, as if telling me to pick up milk

on the way home or a song where she left off.  She says

the competitor in me will thrill when the club connects to the ball

like a bone to the socket and the rocket takes off, soars into blue

like a great blue heron and lands exactly where it should land,

for one second only me and that ball and I have kicked its ass.

I remind her of the last time in my car, how I almost

killed us juggling the stick, phone, latte and a need

to speak often with my hands, question why she

believes I could manage that multitude of in-sync

movements. Those tiny balls. Standing still. Silence.  

She appeals to my heart, the brisk walks and the heft of a bag

that never feels heavy on a good day, the immaculate beauty

of the green, how on a clear Sunday with the sun cresting

and the last dew steaming she can almost see god.

I tell her that’s what churches or children are for,

and cost about the same, and that simply banging

my head against a wall would burn 150 calories

an hour which I already do on a frequent basis. 

She cajoles the career woman in me, insists golf will make me a champ

in the game of schmooze, adds there is no other sport worthy of my

intelligence, my fashion sense, my utter determination to accomplish

the manliest of deeds.

She knows I would wrestle mud eels if a man suggested

it wasn’t my place, but I am over 40, should be beyond that. 

I say honey, I am a poet first (well, 3^rd or 4^th after the son

and husband and 60 hour job and the chores).  Maybe

if there were a short course, or if I could write and dust

at the same time.  Better yet, she should pick up poetry,

fill her holes with words.

This is where it always ends.  Poetry scares the hell out of people,

even more than golf.  This is where it always begins, friends wanting

each other to be each other, to become someone we’re not because

isn’t that what women do, fill our lives with purpose after purpose

with no passion, smile and nod, say yes when we really mean no?

~ first published in Main Street Rag

photoart: sharon auberle

INTRODUCTION TO GARDENING

by Cathryn Cofell

I know dead when I see it.

Bile-colored leaves,

decomposing stalks.

I know about dredging

these small corpses

from the earth,

the heft of gathering remorse

in gloved hands.

A noticeable weight, yes,

but not so heavy considering

this loss was born

from these same neglectful hands. 

And yes, it was neglect,

those luxuriant black-sky days

when downpour seemed so certain,

those lolling humid days

when reading or sleep

were more important chores.

I know perennials,

they come back.

Like old boyfriends or lies.

Unwilling to be contained, popping

up when you least expect them.

Growing is what they do, even here

in this godforsaken place

I call a garden, a yard, a home. 

Yes, I know dead when I see it.

~ first published in the Comstock Review

HIGH-SPEED CONNECTIONS

digital art: ralph murre

HIGH-SPEED CONNECTIONS
by Cathryn Cofell

I took a digital picture of my hand
and sent it away,
emailed to a psychic in West Bend.
At first, undeliverable.
Then a suspicious attachment, needs
authentication.A third time she replied,
said my palm was fuzzy.
I became her $20 Pay Pal
and suddenly she had clarity,
a map quest, a maze of intersections.
She saw a scoundrel’s name,
Lucy or Cin,
a flamboyant but unremarkable life.
Wrong, I said, that was not my life-
line she was reading,
it must have been a silver hair
caught on the lens as the shutter closed.
But she held firm,
said it was more than the palm
she read. She knew me. She saw
how my lines crossed with others,
a flash of pain in every touch.
She saw a future as a circus act
or a hit man and I knew she had me,
caught in her sites, that day
I let you fall from my slick palms,
that endless Hitchcock drop,
hands forever clutching,
cliffs of straw and chaff.

~ previously published in Oranges & Sardines

EDENFRED RETREAT

photo: cathryn cofell

EDENFRED RETREAT
by Cathryn Cofell

Eden, in Genesis, is a garden.
Fred, in Norwegian, is peace.
I, in Edenfred, am stymied,
the reflux of first sin and false men:
. . . . . . .How Eve loved the apple more than Adam.
. . . . . . .Adam loved Eve more than God.
. . . . . . .God loved to lay traps in his trees.
. . . . . . .Treed is how I felt by loving Fred.
. . . . . . .Fred loved to cheat on his girl (but she wasn’t me).
. . . . . . .Me? I loved all the wrong men, those
. . . . . . .snakes loved to tempt and I bit every time.
. . . . . . .In time I grew to love poison,
. . . . . . .but it was venom to bible verse and love.

A garden should be a well-cultivated place,
peace should be a freedom from disquieting thoughts,
Edenfred is built for both,
but I am demolished:
. . . . . . .a belief in the dogma of Fred more than Eden,
. . . . . . .that both quit me before I quit believing in them.
. . . . . . .I like to believe I found a safe love or
. . . . . . .that love believes it safely found me.
. . . . . . .Safe? Don’t believe it. I am Newton:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .bonked on this head full of sin,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .a discovery of the sins of gravity,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .that wrongs can’t help but roll downhill
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .to this place I now pace seeking redemption,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .seeking penance for resurrecting Eden and Fred
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .but craving apples, big green apples: juicy, tart.

~ first appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal