March 2021
Bio Note: I tell the people in my life to be careful about how they behave around me because they
just might make it inside a poem and they might not like it. To be fair, I am typically harder on myself than
any of them. It's been almost a year since I submitted a poem for consideration anywhere, was busy promoting my
new collection Stick Figure With Skirt (which won the 2019 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award) until the
pandemic hit. Since then, I've been trying not to wallow.
What I Learned From My Mother
-after Julie Kasdorf
I learned from my mother how to love
to type, 120 wpm without error.
I learned to have plenty of books in stacks
around the house, to value the list with titles
like “To Do” or “Someday When We Go
to Alaska,” and how a slash through each
completed task burns like a tiny angel kiss
on the cheek. I learned every puzzle
can be solved with a sharp pencil
and that a cold cloth heals many hurts.
I learned to keep my skin clean more
than my house, and that love isn’t like
the movies, that sometimes slamming
a door is another word for romance.
I learned martyrs are not necessarily saints
or vice versa, and the names of the saints
and sacraments, and that forgiveness
is a Hail Mary with two seconds left in the game.
What people say is often not the whole truth,
but I learned everyone will believe you
if you can pull off a genuine smile. For every
stray dog you take in, you must give
something in return: the uneaten pie, a bag
of gently washed rags, a folded $2 bill.
Originally published in Stick Figure With Skirt (Main Street Rag)
Basement Office
The wind is fierce across the hill,
the snow fence, those flowers
outside my high window stripped
down to thistle, and finches,
catching a nibble
while their small bodies slam
against the glass, flung
with each gust.
Over the hum of computers
and the prattle of phones
I can hear them, shrilling
and thumping, yet they go back
and back again for more
dead flowers
as the glass fills with sticky pink
tufts as if the sun setting into clouds,
as if this pane was a canvas
and hunger the cruelest paint,
as I turn away from that egress
view and go back
again to my work.
©2021 Cathryn Cofell
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL