July 7th, 2009
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Bruce Cohen
AN HONEST MAN’S PROFILE FOR INTERNET DATING
I like to call my women Cookie or Doll, but never That Dame. I expect them comfortable with self-service, able to pump high octane in an evening gown while sipping a ginormous Blue Raspberry Slushie. I like my chicks to be twins at least, or triplets, interchangeable. I like my girls talking on their cells while speeding over the limit, the radio cranked up, doughnut crumbs multiplying in their laps. A gentlemen, I could lick the crumbs off but only if they want me to. I like my ladies okay with pouring hydrogen peroxide and warm olive oil in my ear to loosen the caked in wax. I like women who say words like ditto to amplify a retort, or back at cha’ to definitively end an argument that’s going no where. I like my date to order her steak rare-blue with a double martini, three olives, no sides. I appreciate a gal who knows the difference between lay and lie but keeps it to herself, confident enough to pick up hitchhikers, order a beer and a bump at a dive that smells like sour urine and sawdust, who is way too good at pool and has no qualms about asking for a fist full of quarters and shaking her moneymaker over to the juke box. Do you like Tony Bennett?, she coos. I like my broads tough yet still able to take a damp cloth to the baby puke on my shoulder before I’m out the door to work! I like the kind of woman who stares in the mirror and sees someone else, who tries on her friends’ dresses and perfume when they’re not home, who riffles through medicine cabinets at business socials, who doesn’t carry a pocketbook when solo. I like my ladies with southern polysyllabic names and I abuse every single syllable, slowly. I like my dreamboat sweating on the treadmill, singing to herself. I’m not old fashioned but I like my women to be cheery and well groomed in high heels when I come home, my dinner on the table, wisps of steam rising, linen napkins, the children already bathed, read to, spanked, threatened, who refer to their breasts as “my girls.” I like my ball and chain working two jobs and funneling the cash into my pockets while I nap. I like women who are accustomed to talking to a dead sister, not related by blood. I like a babe who says especially yes without any pre-thought. I especially enjoy careful thinkers. I like how my other half turns the ignition key after the motor is already running and when it makes that horrible noise says, what’s that horrible noise? I like women who recognize it cannot be this way, who take charge then back off. I like a lady to take my elbow when we’re walking on an icy sidewalk. Across the street, other women are bobbling fatherless babies and holding blank picket signs; their mouths are sewn shut; they’re wearing secret dark contact lenses. When I meet women in gothic lipstick or Little Bo-Peep dresses entire continents break off from their lips and their mode of escape appears to be as poetic stowaways on cargo liners. I like it when they cry and when I ask what’s wrong they say it’s nothing, mascara running. I like my baby on time, waiting for me; I like my baby to show up when I don’t expect her, sometimes. I like my women to be paper cookie cutter cutouts, and the rare one, in flesh, who doesn’t know she’s so, so beautiful.
–from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
June 7th, 2009
Bruce Cohen
ON SUBMITTING POEMS: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
I wish I could tap together my ruby red L.L. Bean slippers and post questions to a Wizard of Oz Poetry Editor so I could unravel the esoteric truths and mysteries about what factors, what esthetics, he really considers when deciding whether or not to accept my poems, what the deal breakers are. To think that “famous names” on submitted poems don’t influence the decision making process strikes me as naïve, although I noticed a few magazines are now requesting that poets not place their names on the poems themselves, which is a very democratic idea. An anti-nepotism movement has been gaining momentum in all aspects of life in America. I’m not yet decided where I fall on that argument. Political graft has never bothered me as long as those crooked politicians support the arts and I believe friends should help friends; who could argue with that? I also wish there was Instant Messenger for poetry submissions. At the very least, for a small fee, magazines could offer same-day response service, like the better dry cleaners. This might be a wonderfully innovative way for magazines to generate revenue, keep subscription costs down and thereby increase readership. Screeners could even receive a small salary. Because I doubt these things will be coming along soon, I’ll take a mundane, less creative view of submitting poems to literary journals and throw in my two-cents worth to boot. I suspect we, poets, (fiction writers seem more patient and mature. I know; I’m married to one.) have a love-hate-mild infatuation-voodoo-pin relationship with editors of literary journals. They have the power, of course, to make us rock-star famous, as much as poets can be rock-star famous. We want them to love us, find us sexy and attractive, admire our quirky sensibilities, and naturally, publish our poems. Sometimes we are so delusional we even hope that editors will solicit our work in the future, or grace their periodical covers with our cool, pouty photos, but let’s not get too carried away here. Not only do we wish for them to publish our poems, but we want them to drown us with a lavish confetti-filled praise parade, let us know that we are indeed, the genius the literary world has been waiting for. No writer since the advent of the printing press has approached the brilliant insights and deep human understanding that we have. No one, to date, demonstrates the linguistic talent or musical ear or explores so marvelously the world the way we do. No one else can break hearts with the simple stroke of a pen. We would like, please, to have that acknowledged. Aside from our intellectual brilliance and keen artistic vision, we would like to be interviewed on CNN to provide our vision of world politics and sports, both college and professional. Why not invite one of us to ring the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange? Of course it is always nice when editors add in the fact that they understand why our genius has been overlooked for so long: the average editor is simply not perceptive enough to appreciate the true level of our, how shall I say this, genius. And we poets simply love our feedback, by snail or electronic mail, by phone, carrier pigeon, or telepathic signals. Some of us even accept transmissions in our dreams, as long as you don’t reverse the charges. (Does that date me?)
December 31st, 2008
Bruce Cohen
THE JERRY LEWIS TELETHON
In those existential black & white days
It was indulgent luxury when television
Succumbed to its own insomnia.
My family adopted the Labor Day Telethon,
The day off, children with no bed times
Huddled around the talking box till 3 a.m.
Surrounded by our personal repartee
Of salty snacks. Members of the rat pack
Would radiate on stage, comedians who’d end
Their shtick with a somber note on the kids,
& a few tame rock n’ roll bands.
I must confess we never pledged a red cent
& when solicited my father said he gave
At work. I must confess when the crippled
Kids (it was okay to say that then) paraded
Across stage I made a fat, slow sandwich in
The kitchen so I’d be spared the drooling,
Slurred incoherent speech, their contorted
Bodies supported by utterly exhausted parents,
Their crutches & wheelchairs just out of reach.
Look at us we’re walking. Look at us
We’re talking. We who’ve never walked
Or talked before. I was curious about one
Thing: Jerry never revealed his personal conviction:
Why he volunteered his heart year after year.
People asked him always & he was stoically
Evasive. It was the scoop. It sucked you in.
I loved the 24-hour evolution of his tuxedo.
When the telethon was new & hopeful,
It was neatly pressed, shiny crow-black,
His bow-tie so perfect it must have been tied
By someone else. By the next bleary morning,
His face unshaved, bags swelled under his eyes,
The tie undone of course, you could smell
His stale Marlborough breath through the TV.
But Jerry could do anything. Just his face
Made us laugh. Astaire-like dancer, uncanny mimic,
A singer, according to my father, better than Frank
or Dean, he’d duet with whoever graced
His couch. Jerry was especially moved by
Unexpected stars & hugged & kissed even men.
I wanted to be Jerry. The wacky voices, the fake
Buck teeth. Unabashed generosity. I must confess
I got chills during the drum roll before the new
Total was announced. I even prayed a little
For the cure though I suspected none of the kids
Were Jewish so I worried my God might
Not be watching the show. But Jerry was
Jewish. So was Sammy Davis. I loved how
We adopted him too, glass eye & all, the way he
Threw in a Yiddish phrase when he spoke
& we all smiled his same crooked smile.
After three hours of sleep I would stumble
Downstairs & flip on the show. None of the big
Names were there at 5 a.m. Only Jerry. Only
Some pudgy Vinnie from Local 526 who pledged
744 bucks that he personally collected from
Customers on his bread route, only a scout master
From troop 13 whose boys collected 121 dollars
From returning Coke bottles at two cents a pop.
The early morning acts were crummy. Jerry needed
Filler. A girl, who would be described in those
Days as negro, was twirling a baton while doing
Cartwheels. Jerry was twirling a baton as well.
He could do anything. During her penultimate
Cartwheel the girl’s top slid down.
She quickly pulled it back up but I saw her breast.
It was brief I admit but I saw it on TV.
I had never seen a breast outside of my family
Before & she ran off the stage in quick humiliation
But Jerry, the gentleman that he was, ignored the indignity,
Applauded & asked for the new total. All my life
I wanted to ask contemporaries if they happened
To be awake at that precise moment, if they had
Seen what I’d seen, if it really happened.
You know the business about the tree falling
& if it makes a sound if no one is around?
Don’t we need a witness to validate our lives?
Each of us is so expert at deceiving ourselves.
–from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
