Caitlin Cowan
Letter to My Long Distance Lover in Which We're Ross & Rachel
Russell Stover and the other women you preferred:
on the counter of Hudson News, a box. There is no love,
just a card you made out with a stranger’s pen.
When we get back, no monkeys watch us make love
to your answering machine. You won’t travel
in the lonely country of me. I bring home Moët
like Rachel should have, wear its cage like a muzzle.
I stayed on the plane is your middle name. I literally weep
on its literal wings, the seams. We take a break like they did—
cowardice and canned laughter fill the hours, commercials
squeaking please just love me (front and back). The break:
watching him sleep on eighteen fringed pages
but he isn’t. Awake, all the babies are only bad dreams—
the icicles weep like old mothers, and it must be spring.
Born and raised in the Midwest, Caitlin Cowan’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Missouri Review, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere. A finalist for the Levis Prize in Poetry, she’s won the Mississippi Review Prize, the Ron McFarland Prize for Poetry, and an Avery Hopwood Award. She holds a PhD in English and has taught writing at the University of North Texas, Texas Woman’s University, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. She works, travels, and teaches for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Twin Lake, Michigan. Find her at caitlincowan.com.
Return to March 2020 Edition
Russell Stover and the other women you preferred:
on the counter of Hudson News, a box. There is no love,
just a card you made out with a stranger’s pen.
When we get back, no monkeys watch us make love
to your answering machine. You won’t travel
in the lonely country of me. I bring home Moët
like Rachel should have, wear its cage like a muzzle.
I stayed on the plane is your middle name. I literally weep
on its literal wings, the seams. We take a break like they did—
cowardice and canned laughter fill the hours, commercials
squeaking please just love me (front and back). The break:
watching him sleep on eighteen fringed pages
but he isn’t. Awake, all the babies are only bad dreams—
the icicles weep like old mothers, and it must be spring.
Born and raised in the Midwest, Caitlin Cowan’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Missouri Review, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere. A finalist for the Levis Prize in Poetry, she’s won the Mississippi Review Prize, the Ron McFarland Prize for Poetry, and an Avery Hopwood Award. She holds a PhD in English and has taught writing at the University of North Texas, Texas Woman’s University, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. She works, travels, and teaches for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Twin Lake, Michigan. Find her at caitlincowan.com.
Return to March 2020 Edition