Poems
The Bars Insist
The bars insist
they don’t belong
in prison. We’re not
even bars, they say.
We’re stripes pried
from a zebra’s back.
No one listens––not
the guards and not
petitions. No one
listens until a number
comes along insisting
he’s a man, and
without a crop or
saddle, on seven
stripes rides off.
Love
It’s an extreme
sport––like in-
door beekeeping.
Andrea Cohen's latest poetry collection, Everything, is just out; other recent collections include Nightshade and Unfathoming. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA.