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Lynn Cohen
SONNET FOR A WOMAN IN TROUBLE
Explore more of Lynn Cohen’s work in her new poetry pamphlet NOTHING TO BE SORRY FOR, currently in release from O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press 2023 Pamphlet Series.
Desperate as an unwritten poem
some words too expensive, she steals, hoards them
loses track of where they’re buried. She digs
with clawed fingers, furious at her mind
for hiding what she trusted it to hold.
She forgets appointments and promises
especially those she made to herself.
With a driftwood stick, she scrawls in sand: “HELP”
but on this beach, nobody will see it.
She’s made no plans for what will happen when
she falls, alone, permanently injured.
She’s heard that’s frequently how the end comes
but tells herself it won’t happen to her
not realizing it already has.
About the writer:
Lynn Glicklich Cohen has been published in Amelia, Amethyst Magazine, Brushfire Literature and Arts Journal, Cantos, El Portal, Flights, Front Range Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Peregrine, SLAB, Spotlong Review, St. Katherine’s Review, Swamp Ape Review, Thin Air Magazine, and Trampoline. Her novel, A Terrible Case of Beauty, was published by Trebol Press in 2013. She received a Masters of Social Work from Simmons College in Boston and practiced as a clinical social worker for several years in Boston and Baltimore. She then moved to Vermont and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston.
Image: A Young Lady’s Adventure by Paul Klee (1879-1940). Watercolor on paper. 17.2 x 12.1 inches. 1921. Public domain.
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