Andrea Cohen

Paper Dolls

Halls of fame keep
special places for paper

dolls, for the fact
and the idea

of them—their way
of claiming the stage

as if by magic, scissored
from newsprint, from headlines

of train wrecks and the fine
print of obits, signaling

the antidote to the only
child’s rainy day.

Note how they hold
hands without thinking,

their stance a chorus
line on demand.

Standing tall, the paper
dolls, without opening

their paper mouths,
tell all: the binding

contract any creature
made of paper, made

of scissors, stone, or flesh,
would do well to emulate:

the we, we, we, invincible,
indivisible, of paper, and of deed.




The Good and the Bad

In dreams my dead spill
popcorn at the opera, they

guffaw at the death scenes.
My mother tells me to let

the ants in my ant farm go.
When we went mano-

a-mano in the flesh,
I never listened. But

in these dreamed cameos,
I let the ants go, which

surprises, then saddens
my mother, as if she

knows the price of being
dreamed is to disappear again.




Theory of the Broken

The theory of the broken
window is that breakage

is a temporary state.
The theory states

that one window,
fixed, opens up

a window for renewal.
The repair of windows

is twofold: insert
the glass into the frame,

then institute a buyback
plan: for every stone

about to be thrown, a glass
of milk, a bedtime glory.




Andrea Cohen grew up in Georgia and received her MFA from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry collections include Kentucky Derby (Salmon Poetry 2011), Long Division (Salmon Poetry 2009), and The Cartographer's Vacation (Owl Creek Press 1999). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Diode, Smartish Pace, Plume, Front Porch Journal, The Hudson Review, Dark Sky Magazine, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA




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