Cul-De-Sac by Andrea Cohen

Cul-De-Sac

Like all tyrants,

my mother made

decrees. The last

straw was the law

that said: no frogs

inside the house.

The lousy universe!

I was seven and ready

to flee with nothing. At

least take a sandwich,

my mother said,

tucking a foil brick

into the kerchief

I’d tied to a stick. I

was a real hobo.

I barely watched her

watch me walk off.

I got all the way

to the cul-de-sac

and sat down to eat.

It was a sandwich

full of grief––

grief and salt,

grief and tomatoes,

grief and cheese.

How far into

far did I go?

How is it

my glass of milk

was still cold

when I got home?

Still Life with Rose by Richard Scott

Still Life with Rose

 

Like a foreskin being pulled back, the damask 

reveals – pelvic bowl of pink-fringed shadow, 

dense sweet-meat bloom, coral’d cave, puce 

empyrean with no vanishing point, planetary blush! 

So let me in – where everything is new-born 

and crystalline, paused and protected – into that other 

world, that high-shine place of safety, arranged 

and sparking up like a bower. Almost every day, 

for some moments, I think about him – the black 

stems, thorns that can prick so deeply, whorl 

of serrated leaves, all just beneath, around – still 

gorgeousness – your petal’d cumulus, your constancy – 

helps me live. O rose keep on stunning for me – 

for all us boys who have been ruined by men.