friendship/Getting Older/Life and Death/Love/TRUE

Party for Joe

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 1 Comment

Saturday Joe celebration

Joe loved parties people discussing

everything  he danced

with Annie last New Year’s Eve at a bar on 72nd Street

liked going to lunch to dinner even breakfast

see movies plays curious and full he always carried

a book with him Joe  knew how to love and all the people

who came to have a drink or two or three  to Joe

at the Water Club on the river a Joe day they all

loved Joe still do his party was perfect

beautiful skies open bar white roses  piano player who knew

every single Cole Porter song Leonard Cohen too

in his tribute Joe’s grandson Corey called Leonard Cohen’s

songs geriatric erotica Joe would have loved that

end of the program Annie maybe she is

an angel on this earth Annie as beautiful as Annie

Joe loved Annie  Annie loved Joe Annie read

Joe’s last poem called Ummm because he couldn’t remember

but he knew he loved poems, wanted to keep reading them

out loud to strangers wanted to live and live and live. He does.

 

 

choices/food/friendship/Poetry/strangers

A Moroccan Man and Woman I Did Not Know

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 0 Comment

met them at a party last night

he gave me his Arabic translation

of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets his wife

a book of her Arabic poems I did not

bring my books for them

trays of food hard not to eat it all

deserts from phyllo dough honey and nuts

orange slices with cinnamon

stories of life and life  here

for four years from Morocco for work

three boys rented house in Pelham

round and full entirely present arms open wide

my first trip to the Middle East  crazy impossible

place  hard not to want to live there

with people like this man and his wife  and yet

she’s been in New York  four months now she said

Anyone Would Want To Live Right Here.

 

 

About Me/choices/Don't Miss This NYC/hope

Meet Me at a Sample Sale

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 3 Comments

we could meet

at my favorite sample sale

at 350 Seventh Avenue

between 29 and 30

I love sample sales for their

unpredictability for their

purple velvet gloves and spherical hats

five dollar bins

sometimes two dollar bins

once years ago I bought a black and white dress

real dominoes sewn as buttons

You Can Have That said the man who

made it he was from Montenegro

no one else even picked it up

I wore his domino dress

for years.

 

hope/Life and Death/Poetry/TRUE/words/writing

There Are Always Poems

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 4 Comments

Even on difficult days when

a close friend dies Things Happen

the way they do because life is when

Things Happen snow and

a strange woman falls then she gets up

we  help get up  she walks away

And  I go to the library to get

More Books   always More Books

reading  one of the small miracles of  life

reading has always saved me because

No Matter What life is stories.  Even poems.

About Me/choices

Dialogue

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 5 Comments

 

Question:

Do you know where the small

glass pitcher is?

(I put the fresh coriander in it)

I use it for making coffee every

day and I don’t want to use a substitute

pitcher so do you think you could

Move the Coriander

(and why did you buy

Coriander Any Way)

 

Answer:

When I went to the farmer’s market

yesterday morning to buy chicken feet so I could

make chicken soup the weather was bad and the

chicken man decided to stay home.  He lives

in Upstate New York and once he told me

even though he lives in the country he doesn’t

much like driving.  I saw a new Japanese vendor

selling coriander so I bought some.

Without a recipe or any other

clear intention.  At home I thought

coriander might look good in the small glass pitcher.

 

Question:

Can you put it somewhere else?

Answer:

I suppose yes.

 

 

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