JULIA COHEN

Spicy Dirty Dirty Spicy

I wanna live inside a jar of frog eggs
like a buoyant mosh pit
How I feed myself is different
then how I feed my friends

Come over for dinner you can
rest your legs on my frog eggs
Some of them
Some of them at least are like clean dreams

I tell my students they can put dirty dishes
in their poems if their dishes are dirty
Dark dirt it’s okay
I stop at a grocery store on my way home
from class & buy one can of corn

What will this corn complement?
When my brother & I built
canned food castles in the pantry our dad strapped
hard hats to our heads
let us knock down the metal turrets
with a Wiffle ball bat

Do pantries still exist? If so, I wouldn’t store
my frog eggs there
If you come over I will wash
my dishes beforehand
I will play Grimes’ “Oblivion” quietly on repeat
I will stack my jars of frog eggs in an inviting manner
those little black specs in watery pouches
What could burst could be anything

My students have gotten in the habit
of calling anything sexual in poems spicy.
Spiiicy, Diana whispers.
Spiiiiicy, Stephanie mimics.

There are so many things I wanna build
or knock down that do not require a hard hat
I don’t want Frank O’Hara’s love
I want his dirt

If you come over, I promise
not to say any phrases
that begin with FRO & end with GGS

I wanna see my parents be grandparents
I think they’d live longer this way
I wanna tell the new people I date
that I had an abortion a year ago
but I’m afraid they’ll be afraid
to sleep with me

I wanna pick up where I left off
like nothing’s happened
But what’s in your fists?
Are those frog eggs leaking out?

Whatever Light

whatever light was
whatever light was is
whatever light was is a little
whatever light was is a little bit less now

inside this
inside this water
inside this missing water
inside this water that’s also missing

When I Left My Body

Sometimes water forgets
how to make ice.

Sometimes my heart
forgets it is a lake
of frozen horses.

When I left my body
what could I do?

I felt for the first time.

I felt for the first time
I could cause no harm.

Let words spell themselves.
Let them spill.

Julia Cohen's most recent book is a hybrid collection of lyric essays, I Was Not Born (Noemi Press, 2014). Her essays and poems appear in journals like The Rumpus, Juked, Jellyfish Review, BOMB, and Entropy. With Abby Hagler, she runs an interview column at Tarpaulin Sky so feel free to contact her about your forthcoming books. She can be found at www.JuliaCohenWriter.com