Two Poems

Image by Ashley Geiger

Or the whale

beached. Too early for a reveal?
Every couple of years she asks
if I remember how the men

ran furious to drape her in wet
towels, grabbing anything they could
muster—yellow sand pails,

plastic shovels, one man his beer
cooler. We stood on the dock.
For years, I remembered nothing

but the hotel pool. Tenuous
buoyancy, contests of breath.  
When I dove into the deep end

no one was watching. To drown
without witness and survive is a debt
to a whale I can never pay back.

Story goes

Once upon a time, Uncle Jack,
he died of AIDS. Once upon a time,

Uncle Jack, he died of AIDS
so my father built a cabin in the woods.

Once upon a time, Uncle Jack,
he died of AIDS, so my father only kissed

men from a distance and on Thursdays
and when I was old enough to know

the difference. Of course, by then,
the cabin was no longer in the family.

About the Author

Colette Cosner is a Seattle-based poet. Her work can be found in Cascadia Rising Review, Pacifica Literary Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Aurora - The Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology and forthcoming in Poetry Northwest.

About the Artist

Ashley Geiger is a visual artist from Toledo, OH. Her work seeks to reanimate old photographic processes like calotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and daguerreotypes to create a bridge between the past and present to recover the voices of those who have been forgotten overlooked, or underrepresented in history.