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Sour Candy

By Bruce Cohen
Poetry•Vol. XXV No. 2 (Summer 2012)

Ironic physics principle about less skin-surface area,
People actually get wetter running through a downpour than walking.
Presto-change-o: evening’s an inductive conclusion of any afternoon.
Before I learned to read I learned to read minds. Because I exist

In the digital age, my uncanny memory for phone numbers is
Transforming into a carnivorous dinosaur. Should there be a plane
Crash, I never fly with myself on the same flight so I continue to exist
In solitary confinement, serving two consecutive life-sentences,

Often impersonating myself. Poetry, I suspect, is recognizing how
The world’s secret hiding places evolve beyond their intended functions.
For instance, virtually no one uses his car’s glove compartment
For the sole purpose of stashing gloves anymore & most of us drive so

Nonchalantly, only one finger guiding the steering wheel. I’m older
Than my father because I am older than my father was when he died.
Me-myself, I am the type of father who drinks from invisible tea cups,
Crammed into toy furniture, conversing with imaginary playmates

The daughter I don’t have invented. In this world I take a chainsaw
To couch legs—tall people sit down & don’t know where to put
Their gloves. Ironic principle of physics, when a wild baseball breaks
A window that crack travels at the speed of sound, which is slower

Than the escape of outside boys, but glass does not decompose for
A million years. A significant number of the daydreaming masses
Is literally frightened to death each year in its overpopulated solitary
Confinement, often from a noise as innocuous as a backfiring muscle-car.

Bruce Cohen’s poems have appeared in periodicals including AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Southern Review, as well as being featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. He has published two books: Disloyal Yo-Yo (Dream Horse Press), which was awarded the 2007 Orphic Poetry Prize, and Swerve (Black Lawrence Press); a third is forthcoming next year (Black Lawrence Press): "Placebo Junkies Conspiring With The Half-Asleep."

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