Andrea Cohen

UFOs

I believe that things
fly, that I don’t know
what they are or what
they might signify. 
I see them all 
the time, behind
the drive-in, inside
my friend’s eyelids,   
and just as frequently 
I witness objects  
I can’t identify except  
to say they seem 
like children about 
to ask a question.
Does everyone get
their own sky? Is life
really like a bullet
you try to ride, or
more like a buffet
of baffling appetizers
and entrees? Is it all
you can steal? I
steel myself
to the mysteries, to 
believing everything flies
in the face of classification.
Why else would Miss Hestle
have gathered us that 
afternoon in a glassy room
in third grade to watch 
her cry? Outside, 
monarch butterflies were
auditioning for a movie
called The World is Full
of Mystery and Wonder
and we hovered above 
our futures, we 
beat our wings  
in ways we have 
failed, in essay 
after essay, ever 
to replicate.

Andrea Cohen’s seventh collection of poems, Everything (Four Way Books), is just out. Cohen’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts.