Andrea Cohen

To the Woman Going Up the Escalator at Columbus Circle at Five-Thirty Last Evening

You were holding
a fortunate orchid.
I was not
the slob standing
beside you. I
was the slob behind,
one who’d live
happily on half
an ice cube
now and again
to ascend once
to a blue
moon with you.

FIRST LOVE

She was
always
leaving
the dark on.

Andrea Cohen's "To the Woman Going Up the Escalator at Columbus Circle at Five-Thirty Last Evening" and "First Love" as well as "Coming in from the Cold," "Prayer," and "In the Middle of the Stone" can be read in the print edition of The Arkansas International 2.

Andrea Cohen has poems forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Threepenny Review, Plume, Tikkun, and elsewhere. Her fifth poetry collection is Unfathoming (Four Way Books 2017). Recent books include Furs Not Mine and Kentucky Derby. Cohen directs the Writers House at Merrimack College and the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA.