Everyone Has A Ribcage
They say in Kansas people are handy.
They figure skate and sew their own sequins,
while others sit home and pretend to slit their wrists.
They say my hands smell like duct tape.
Being born wasn’t easy and neither was seventh grade.
I was born in a bushel, on a tarmac, on a blistered road.
It doesn’t really matter where.
As long as there is cake for everyone.
Birthdays are sad and in the end we are all sad.
Gold is the color of wonder.
Gold used to be the color of Kansas.
Sometimes I feel like I’m on a battleship,
and that I’m waiting to be rescued.
I can feel the dull sky against my head.
It’s waiting for a new continent,
for a waterlogged heartbeat.
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Deer Heart
Gladys went to the parade knowing that there wouldn’t be any funnel cake. The day had been balmy and sticky and Gladys knew that days like these were never really good. But she loved to watch the costumes. Thick and glistening she marveled at their beauty. Each ruffled stitch. Each ticking of twill. Gladys once read of a man born with thirty six ribs. She couldn’t imagine the enormity of such a life. Gladys could barely handle saying hello to people she knew. And as she stood on the street watching the rush of color she could feel her life bend in the light of the unending sadness. Gladys used to be a rodeo captain. A steamship pointing in the distance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From The Distant Hum Of The Refrigerator
When I said that I missed you I didn’t really mean it.
And when I said that running is the fastest form of movement
I didn’t really mean that either.
It has been years since your hands were cold and splintered
and the grey moon of night couldn’t keep me
from cartwheeling under a bleached out sky.
From wading through the knee deep trenches of your life.
We are all a sinking ship.
We are all hanging over the edge of some underwater building.
Waiting for the white winter hive and its honelyess beauty.
Waiting to disappear into the bone colored sand
of some distant planet.
I would have hurdled through the streets for you.
You were a messianic sign. A door post made of gold
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Lyndsey Cohen has poems in other places like Sentence, Diagram, Skein, and Glitterpony.