https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
http://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998
Poems by Miriam Kotzin
Census
The neighbors
have gone.
From their mail
slot, a weathered
handbill droops,
a lolling tongue.
Black hightops
hang on the wire
by red laces.
Lonely dancers
swing to wind’s
wordless song.
In still air,
irresolute,
they suspend
the question.
The neighbors
have gone, left
all their shades,
opaque as brick,
pulled down
to the sills.
The neighbors
have all gone,
have left it all,
have left it all
up to me.
Class Photo
That’s me, trying to hide
in the first row center.
I almost look happy!
Anyhow, I’m smiling.
In the first row center,
that’s where the short girls stood.
Anyhow, I’m smiling.
I’d just cut my own hair.
That’s where the short girls stood—
we pretended we were friends.
I’d just cut my own hair,
and it was uneven.
We pretended we were friends
though we kept score with snubs,
and it was uneven.
They said I looked real cute.
Though we kept score with snubs,
we’d always patch things up.
They said I looked real cute
with short bangs and loose curls.
We’d always patch things up.
They said most boys liked girls
with short bangs and loose curls.
They made it sound dirty.
They said most boys liked girls
like me. What did they mean?
They made it sound dirty,
like my arm pits had fleas.
Like me? What did they mean?
They made me feel dirty,
like my arm pits had fleas.
It strikes me funny how
that’s me, trying to hide.
I almost look happy.
Lenten
She would have preferred
indifference to her ashes.
“What does it mean
to turn away from sin?”
That was the year she gave up
conventional sacrifice. Without
hunger, she might as well live
on light and Mozart.
Frankincense and myrrh,
or the sandalwood
she burned at home—
it was all the same to her.
“I told my therapist that I suffer
from spiritual anorexia.”
Her dreams, like shop windows,
furnished all her reliquaries:
her own shreds and shards.
She could not look away.
Awake, she was on bare
ground in a field of high grass,
an abandoned egg.
Author Miriam N. Kotzin is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, Debris Field (David Robert Books 2017). Her collection of short fiction, Country Music (Spuyten Duyvil Press 2017), joins a novel, The Real Deal (Brick House Press 2012), and a collection of flash fiction, Just Desserts (Star Cloud Press 2010). Her fiction and poetry have been published in anthologies and numerous periodicals such as Shenandoah, Boulevard, SmokeLong Quarterly, Mezzo Cammin, Offcourse, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. She teaches creative writing and literature at Drexel University.