2 Poems
Marion Deutsche Cohen
SOME ADVICE FOR GOD
“Time should be more elastic…” Barbara Crooker in “The Sun Lays Down Its Light” (from “More”)
“Time should be more elastic”
more topological.
Space too.
Pain, while necessary to alert and keep us alive
shouldn’t hurt so much.
Bodies, so self-cleansing
Should be more so.
Self-healing, too. Not only some of the time. And quicker.
Maybe even there’s a way
for them not to have guts.
And dust, what did that come from?
As for sex, that should be the way I used to think.
He just puts it in, or you put them together
and automatically it happens.
Working Towards It is highly over-rated.
You might not be able to do much about the problem of babies not staying babies
or how one can be certain of the existence of other minds.
But you could, in general, do better.
Try it, you might like it.
Anyway, WE’D like it.
Go ahead, why don’t you just try?
I LOVE HIM BUT I NEED AIR
In the morning I like to burrow
His neck
His armpit
His goodies.
I roll my head and fists into one little ball and partake of his special smell.
But in only a minute my breath collects.
What if I had to stay that way forever?
I think about medieval tortures, heated masks
and that story “the Cage”
also my own birth
the way my mother used to tell it
too long, for the both of us
I wish people didn’t have to breathe
or they could breathe through their feet.
Noses could be only for sniffing his scent.
I could burrow without dying
all morning long.
Marion Deutsche Cohen's latest poetry book is "Chronic Progressive" (Plain View Press, TX), about spousal chronic illness after nursing home placement, and about moving on. Her books total 19, including "Crossing the Equal Sign" (Plain View Press), poetry about the experience of mathematics, "Epsilon Country" (Center for Thanatology Research, NY), and the memoir "Dirty Details: The Days and Nights of a Well Spouse" (Temple University Press, PA). She teaches math at Arcadia University, and is particularly excited about a course which she developed, "Truth and Beauty: Mathematics in Literature". Other interests are classical piano, singing, Scrabble, thrift-shopping, four grown children, and three grands.