choices/Coronavirus/dreaming/sleep

Misplaced Anxiety Poem (CV)

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 5 Comments

For those of you who have been Reading Here Awhile you know I don’t usually write poems  Saturday or Sunday.  For No Good Reason.   Not Now.

 

We watched Unorthodox.  Netflix is

Corona Virus Medicine. Unorthodox not

as good as Shtisel (what is? tell me

if you know the answer ).  Good enough

for last night.

 

In my usual Effort at Sleeping I listened to a new

podcast by Emily and Kumar called Staying In.

The Big Sick a good movie about them.

They’re too hyper for sleep help.

Still hearing them is

if you can use a word like this now

Fun.

 

Some time a while later

I fell asleep and dreamt

I went to see new friend Sarah who lives

in Canada and even though she doesn’t like

restaurants she’s almost an anti-foodie who knows

what she eats still I thought I should find a good place

for us to go.  Everything of course is closed.  At last

I found The Blue Fish still open  you

can sit down and it’s right in downtown Toronto. We

went and the fish was good.

 

 

body parts/Coronavirus/meditation

Heads and Bodies (CV)

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 0 Comment

Each evening I’ve been doing Zoom meditations.

Some of  the teachers are rabbis.

Rabbi Igal told us most Jews believed

(and that’s how we lived) our body

was meant to hold up our head.  Now we have

to find the body he said.  And I thought about the Jews

I knew when I was a child two in particular my father

and Rabbi Theodore Gluck.

Both had big heads not as big as Warren Beatty

Jewish too but big enough and we did

the usual elemental exercise Coming Into Our Bodies

and for almost an hour I forgot my head but then

when it became time to write this poem my head

returned and so this is not really a body poem.

 

 

 

About Me/Coronavirus/Poetry

What We Do Each Day (CV )

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 12 Comments

Maybe we should Write Down

What We Do  so we’ll remember

what this was like afterwards when it’s summer

when friends come to dinner again when we

are less worried about What Might Happen

when we know for sure it is really is summer

and  corn and watermelon and tomatoes and even my friends

who don’t eat meat come over for Peter’s barbecued ribs.

And meanwhile today one thing I do I always do

ever since I was eleven years old when I had

far fewer options  I wake up and choose

a pair of earrings, and write a poem.

 

hope/Love/Poetry

What We Have To Do (from last night’s class) (CV)

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 4 Comments

Last night’s class women

who’d been in prison we write

together Tuesday nights in last night’s Zoom class

strong women they’d all been quarantined

so many years one works in a men’s homeless shelter

400 beds poor Brooklyn neighborhood men

are sick and difficult another helps with seniors

in low income housing  brings them meals

tells them jokes last night they said that what they

learned being inside in a Big Quarantine

was how much we have to help each other

how much we need to love.

Coronavirus/hope/Poetry

Finally (CV)

Posted on by Esther Cohen / 7 Comments

 

I found a pair of lost red glasses

in a stack of papers in a Mexican bag

I’d intended to sort for a few years now

and because I am not usually sitting in the apartment

for hours on end maybe never until now and because

I am one of those people who buys something every day

even if it’s a bottle of ketchup this apartment is full

of papers and food and I am able now to find my glasses

and some lost poems and pieces of paper I’ve saved

forever like a letter from 1978 from a man who wanted

to write a book that begins with the word Finally.

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