Poetry from Colette Cosner

Photo: Claudio Schwarz

Jesus Year

When you’re eight
and your mother’s boyfriend
buys you a calendar
that’s just past
and you don’t stop crying
in the stationary aisle
of Barnes & Noble
until you have a daughter
of your own. Time
just one of those things
we say. Like that letter
I wrote you, bottled up now
and floating in the belly
of our last great white —
had I known there
was going to be all this
talk of mercy, I would have
bucked the fuck up
a long time ago.
.

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Colette Cosner is a Seattle-based poet. Her work can found in Cascadia Rising Review, Pacifica Literary Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Aurora – The Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology, Poetry Northwest, and forthcoming in Peatsmoke Journal.