Nan Cohen

Loss

A thousand-year-old word is a loosening, too.
The human hand opens eventually,
lets go of what it held.
A thousand-year-old word escapes the mouth, 
the l​ rolls off the tongue, the vowel splays wide,
aww​, the teeth close on a hiss, on nothing.

Nan Cohen is the author of two poetry collections, Rope Bridge and Unfinished City. The recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is also the poetry program director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Viewpoint School and the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.