Andrea Cohen
Two POEMS
Ufos
I believe that things
fly, that I don’t know
what they are or what
they might signify.
I see them all
the time, behind
the drive-in, inside
my friend’s eyelids,
and just as frequently
I witness objects
I can’t identify except
to say they seem
like children about
to ask a question.
Does everyone get
their own sky? Is life
really like a bullet
you try to ride, or
more like a buffet
of baffling appetizers
and entrees? Is it all
you can steal? I
steel myself
to the mysteries, to
believing everything flies
in the face of classification.
Why else would Miss Hestle
have gathered us that
afternoon in a glassy room
in third grade to watch
her cry? Outside,
monarch butterflies were
auditioning for a movie
called The World is Full
of Mystery and Wonder
and we hovered above
our futures, we
beat our wings
in ways we have
failed, in essay
after essay, ever
to replicate.
Dinosaurs in My Head
How
did they get there?
They
heard the word
extinction––
and being wise
creatures
decided to hide
where
fire and ice,
where
time couldn’t find them.
Andrea Cohen’s seventh collection of poems, Everything (Four Way Books), is just out. Cohen’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts.