- Spell, and: Before & After
Spell
When she left we halved
everything but absence.
I didn’t buy another bed,
but slept on the floor.
It was good for a spell
to have nothing to fall out of. [End Page 105]
Before & After
The horse came before the cart.
The cart came after we had
places that no longer loved us.
Far came before farther.
And the whips, and the distance––
which came first? [End Page 106]
Andrea Cohen’s most recent books are Furs Not Mine (Four Way Books, 2015) and Kentucky Derby (Salmon Poetry, 2011). Four Way will publish her fifth poetry collection, Unfathoming, in 2017. Cohen directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA and the Writers House at Merrimack College.