TOBI COGSWELL

October 2008

Tobi Cogswell lives in Southern California and has studied with Nick Flynn, Marie Howe, Heather McHugh and Eileen Myles. Her work has appeared in Other Voices, Eclipse, VerbSap, SPOT, Los Angeles Review and Bellowing Ark, among other publications. She has also published three chapbooks, Sanity Among the Wildflowers, Hostage Negotiation in Negative-Land and Carpeting the Stones.

REDEMPTION

I cannot fasten your necklace, dear wife.
My fingers once straight and purposeful are now bent.
I see the failed winter trees
and know how the branches would feel
if they were men.

I touch my fingertips together and
wonder when the feeling left.
I can't remember the last time
you lifted your hair, allowing me to
circle your neck with diamonds and gold,
tiny blonde curls on the underneath
bending to the pressure of the chain,
my fingers on the clasp.

Come drive with me to ease my mind.
Let's turn circles in the parking mausoleum of the
train station, make up stories about the passengers --

Today my love you drive.
My arm lounges out the window
waving lazily.
The wind teases my fingers
into chords I used to play on my guitar,
while I halfway watch your profile, and
whisper remembered melodies.

--------------------------------------

HOW TO VANISH

First, stop looking in mirrors.
Make love to men only if they close their eyes.
Do not speak with words but analyze between the
spaces,
articulate with thoughts.

Watch the looks on other people's faces
without glasses, leave no fingerprints on textured walls.
Remember sign language, speak only to yourself,
your hands under the table at busy restaurants.

Do not wear perfume.
Alternatively wear your mother's scent.
Or your eighth grade French teacher's.

Keep very still.
Read the graffiti in the grout of tiled walls.
Listen to the arguments outside your window.
"I don't need anything" the man shouts,
and you don't.

Go to the Coast,
have one last adventure.
Take his scarf out of your pocket and
smell that he loved you.
Change your name.