Patricia Cook

Self-Portrait for the Editors of Thick with Conviction and Documentary Director Nick Athas

Thick with Conviction. That's it – thank you, Nick! I have seen me. I go to the site, read the latest emag edition – poem by poem say yes, yes, and yes. Then I wonder. Do each of you scrunch your face like mine – an ancient Yoda, hundreds of years of undiluted wisdom; a wizened prune thick with time, skin drawing in; donut peach in extremis, dot at the bottom insisting juxtaposition to top, remains of style attached to stem clinging to its beginning, cervix to naval introverted asserting its history? Or have all of you more elegant personas?

Part II

Expectations frail as dust. Frail as the clock in every room stopped. Frail as starving criminal. As a child's fear not to feed him. Frail as Wemmick's moat and cannon denying the shadow of work day shabbiness. Frail as heartless beauty.

Frail as the greatest of poets reading, each speaking into the microphone to a room crowded or almost empty of gathered writers, or the ordinary (oxymoron though it might be) poet each taking his or her turn to be heard. Frail as contributors' descriptions: titles of books, the MFAs, magazines where published. The artist working alone in his attic never knowing if anyone will ever see or hear. An infant's first cry whether left in the street to die or lovingly lifted to be fed. Frail as each who survives not knowing why. Frail as a co-creator of IBM's "Blue Gene" after a stroke, no longer able to speak or understand what the keypad is for. Frail as these words trying to sift dust.

The dust from which we are made – Adam, that red there – receiving the gift of breath. Frail breath. Inhale. Exhale the dying breath carrying the voice of each of us – the voice each speaks and hears. Frail, the body requiring each and every breath to live. Gift received. Gift released. Gift received. Gift released. And do we say thank you? No. Frail, frail as dust.

Breathe it in. Try storing it for the future as capital. This property not portable. I burn it. Up in smoke like Miss Havisham's wedding dress. I am unmarried. Left at the altar with no groom. Forsaken by all, except revenge.

I am the dark wish to get even. I take this child, this gift of life, shape it into a Pygmalion tatterdemalion person, pieced together like some Frankensteinian creation. I am that and less. I am that and more. So I beckon. Join me now. Take in a breath. Thank you. Let it go. Take in another. Thank you. Let it go. Another. Thank you. Let it go.

Expectations frail as dust. Frail as the clock in every room stopped. Frail as a starving criminal. As a child's fear not to feed him. Frail as Wemmick's moat and cannon denying the shadow of work day shabbiness. Frail as heartless beauty.




Hearing the Name Janice I Face Both Ways

The way water
receives a stone
I, your name.

Ripples ring.
Who are you?
how do my parents know?
from where do you come,
my sister just born?

Each wave
a laboring womb
at five
an eye opens,
I slip through.

Shivering
in bright air
the hairs
on my arms
rise –
where am I going?
who am I?
from where do I come?

In what secret place
have I been born singing?


Patricia S. Cook lives with her husband and youngest son in Mt. Kisco, New York. For many years besides teaching English, she elicited poems from children by reading good poetry often presented as riddles (with some element they had to fill in) grouped by themes and /or connected to music or some other form of the arts or natural artifacts. Realizing one day that no one could pay her enough to mentor another child through a research paper, she now concentrates on what she loves -- poetry.

 Current Issue:
July 2007

Annabelle Butterworth
Patricia Cook
Joshua Cristiano
Michael Estabrook
Anthony Gee
Taylor Graham
Michael Lee Johnson
Jerry Judge
Stephanie Kemp
Michael Keshigian
Stephanie Kjaerbaek
Brian Mayer
Steve Meador
Jessica Sidler
Karla Ungurean

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