She existed among conditionals
and lived on speculation
beside herself in an arabesque,
declining peroration.

Her teacher was a master of
nothingness, ellipses,
silences and anagrams,
and walked among the gypsies

So she vanished, seeking signs of life
in music and cafes,
in Asian souks and goddesses
and crashing waterways,

in legendary wisdom
taking account of death,
its presence an enigma
indicative of breath.

The air is thin above the clouds.
This loss of gravity
makes even sorrows graceful,
like rivers to the sea.
 

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in Agenda, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Hopkins Review, The Moth, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Threepenny Review, and the TLS, among other journals. Her collection Shot Silk was listed for the 2017 Poets Prize, and her latest collection from Kelsay Books, Why You Can’t Go Home Again, encompasses satire, parody, double dactyls, epigrams, and more. Copies of her poem “More” were heli-dropped across London as part of the 2012 Olympics Rain of Poems, and she has received grants from Giorno Poetry Systems and others.