Issue #33.5 Daniel Coudriet, Lynn Glicklich Cohen, Michael A. Wiegard
Two Poems by Daniel Coudriet
from The Music The Girl Across The Room Is Dancing To
Like the warmth
from a tube amplifier makes you forget
the whole room is in your hands.
Every deep tone. Every resonance.
A body is a vehicle.
A poem is a body.
If you have read this you are not worried
about a meal.
So much we plant
& expect others to deal with.
A collapsed animal’s body
that fought.
A roadside,
a deep breath, people moving,
a medicine.
Needles make sounds.
Wearing sunglasses at dinner is a sign
always
& animals leaving
is something no map can solve,
trees fear guns & cigarettes,
too many birds.
We try to talk
about cliffs,
a collapsed circus tent,
instruments we tried to save.
I’m still walking home
& thinking of notes I didn’t play.
These are the songs I didn’t write.
from The Music The Girl Across The Room Is Dancing To
Houses are echoes of questions
meant well but resented.
Intervals speak by creating space.
A praise of air & vibration as it hits us.
Architecture is a way of needing space,
sleeping in a child’s room.
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Daniel Coudriet is the author of Say Sand (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010) and the chapbook, Parade (Blue Hour Press, 2012). His translation of Argentinean poet Alicia Genovese's Bridges was published by Cardboard House Press in 2024. His poems and translations have made recent appearances in Bennington Review, Cleaver, Conduit, The Idaho Review, Lost Pilots, Midway, Moon City Review, Poetry Northwest, R&R, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. These writings are excerpts from a book-length poem.
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A Poem by Lynn Glicklich Cohen
Perfection
That male cardinal doesn’t know he’s red (or scarlet or crimson) doesn’t know he’s beautiful, startling against this muted winter landscape, his song an unexpected note in a familiar melody, he grabs our attention. Listen to the Largo of Chopin’s cello sonata, imagine hearing an Eb instead of the D in the fourth bar. A surprise that is still beautiful. But not to the mortified cellist. I was married to one once. After performing, he’d tantrum about memory slips, a sloppy lick, skidding bow. He bashed in walls, sulked for days. He heard perfection in his head, forgot and would not forgive the beauty of his own humanity. The difference being, the cardinal cannot sing a wrong note, even if he tried.
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Lynn Glicklich Cohen is a poet from Milwaukee, WI. Her poems have been published in numerous journals. She loves cold weather, late autumn darkness, deep conversation, tart apples, a clean lap pool, and wrangling a poem in progress. She is grateful to Trampoline for supporting her work.
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A Poem by Michael A. Wiegard
August
The area is on red alert, Leaden heat building a storm. You walk into the evening rain, Soaked clothes clinging like hands To your visible skin.
Undressing in darkness Beyond the porch light’s circle, You are cleansed and unreachable As the hidden moon, unable To return and grace this leering world.
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Michael A. Wiegard is a semi-retired attorney from Virginia who now lives outside New Orleans. He returns frequently to visit his three sons and six grandchildren. He has poems forthcoming in Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana.
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