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by Cynthia Cox
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Cynthia Cox (website) taught high school English before returning to graduate school to pursue a Master’s degree in Counseling at the University of Houston. She has been writing poems for 16 years, with publications including The Houston Poetry Festival Anthology 1996, Tres-Di-Verse-City 1999, and, more recently, Cider Press Review, Albatross, and Epicenter Magazine. Her poem “Dog Years” was recently selected as the winner of the 2011 Austin International Poetry Festival.
Waiting For Bolivar Ferry
by Cynthia Cox
We wait our turn
on a weekend
when tourists and teens
converge
on the peninsula
to stretch their skin
in the sun: engines off,
windows down,
radios up,
as if the beat
proclaims
some inner rhythm
of parched hearts.
A sheen of boys
begins to volley
for attention, girls
in open truckbeds
cake makeup,
spray hair
already starched
with heat.
The shoreline
brings the sleaze
out of everyone,
the steam
that shimmies up
from the concrete,
the stick, the sweat,
the hidden grit
that slicks
to the surface.
We are waiting
for Bolivar Ferry.
When it docks
we’ll all pull forward
in tight metal rows
onto the boat
that will slick us
like plastic
six-pack scrap
across the sea.
Cynthia Cox (blog) taught high school English for ten years, and is currently working towards a Master’s degree in counseling. Her poems have appeared in various publications over the years, most recently in Cider Press Review, Albatross, and Epicenter magazine.
Snails
Annie Dillard wrote
about them once, how they followed
a circular trail of slime
for weeks without changing
direction, their reluctance to alter
course almost killing them off,
the need of sustenance reaching the critical
before any would deviate,
even the slightest, to survive.
I know how that feels — a process
ancestral, intestinal, ingrained;
fleshy and dense as a slow organ
producing its juices, leaving a scrawl
across my front porch thick
and tremulous as an old widow’s signature
on a bad check, or a trail of relatives
honing in for Christmas dinner.
by Cynthia Cox
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Cockroach Poem
I am not afraid of the obviously dangerous; can appreciate
the snake, his contractions and curls, the calligraphic language
of his body in motion; or the spider and her radial body,
her windowpane webs gathering gnats and beading the dew.
But you, what purpose do you serve besides your own ugliness,
lurking in lightless places, defying my appointments
with the exterminator, my daily cleanings, my commitment not
to attract your kind. Last night I heard you whispering
through the air filter in my bedroom, the soft
and unmistakable grating of your wings like skin peeling,
like an unfolding letter of condolence, the black
almond of your head poking through a white slat,
just for a moment, then disappearing, continuing to scratch
inside the air shaft long after I went to bed.
In the morning I pulled the filter out of its frame,
found your crisp and iridescent body wedged into thick lint
and filter fibers. Because of your size, I can determine
you don’t live inside, that you come from one
of the chokecherry trees in my front yard, but it doesn’t matter.
I imagine you everywhere that is dark and unacceptable,
a little raisin shell skittering over plates and guest towels
and spoons, like an undeniable truth, like a haunt
across a grave, dragging your armor of indifference.
by Cynthia Cox
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qarrtsiluni 