Julia is the Managing Editor for Nightboat Books, a fiction reader for Small Spiral Notebook, and an editorial assistant at Palgrave Macmillan. Her poems have recently been published in the Mississippi review online, Octopus #7, GutCult, Boog City, Word For/Word and Pindeldyboz, and are forethcoming in H_NGM_N, The Tiny, and Aught. She likes to collaborate so you can reach her at julia.cohen@nightboat.org.

We must synchronize our calendars,
for when we sailed to separate states

our weeks parted without parallel.
FYI: glad we found the grapes and lost

the dogs, one black and one blonde.
I hope you made it home safely-

that your elbow was not knocked off
by cars passing in the other lane.

I used to mark time by the space
between telephone poles. Now I’m off

to the Halloween party as a dead

mountain climber; knickers and coiled
rope from my belt. Metal clips hang

jauntily, I could scan any ledge when
the list of truths is the shortest list.

To indicate that I am dead: ‘X’s over
my eyes. I used black eyeliner, and I

hope that when I close my eyes: an X
in each. (I cannot see with my eyes

closed so who knows if it’s working.)
I care little how the rest of the holiday

turns out for I have already fallen

asleep next to you with a pumpkin
making light like the nightboat does.

I want to claim a visit yet I fear
our calendars are misaligned.

I tried to blow air into the flat flaps
of paper on my wall but all I got

was a breeze you could never catch.
I like and dislike how people believe

every day after the first is an anniversary
of a former shame or glory. This is

the only day I will pretend to be
dead. Light will shine from the X’s

in my eyes and I will dream of
black grapes rolling. So black it is

the list of truths I pocket. To chop
all telephone poles except the one

your X’s climb, climbing the day
neither disgrace nor victory could touch.

© Julia Cohen 2006.