Nan Cohen
Two POEMS
Strand
WOE UNTO HIM THAT STRIVETH WITH HIS MAKER,
AS A POTSHERD WITH THE POTSHERDS OF THE EARTH!
SHALL THE CLAY SAY TO HIM THAT FASHIONED IT: “WHAT MAKEST THOU?”
OR: “THY WORK, IT HATH NO HANDS”?
—ISAIAH 45:9
A thousand-year-old word is a broken
bowl, a few sherds each as big as a dish,
uncountable fragments and dust.
I am stranded, its pieces strewn before my feet.
Each piece of the story is a strand.
A rope. A shore.
Loss
A thousand-year-old word is a loosening, too.
The human hand opens eventually,
lets go of what it held.
A thousand-year-old word escapes the mouth,
the l rolls off the tongue, the vowel splays wide,
aww, the teeth close on a hiss, on nothing.
Nan Cohen is the author of two poetry collections, Rope Bridge and Unfinished City. The recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is also the poetry program director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Viewpoint School and the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.