Joshua Cohen: Four New Messages

Girls throughout alight and nude, or not nude but purified, thoroughly pristinated as I proceed — through the statics of climate — to recognize: Natashka one and another from that vid with the Cuban I think and yet another from a schoolyard seduction and still another from the bucked back of a moving truck and a girl I recall her name too, I think Masha, Sasha, Svetlana (trans. luminance ) — and they are themselves but aren’t, as they were both onscreen and you have to guess in life itself, but not.

You can speak to them but there’s no indication, Mom, that they can hear you and certainly they can’t speak to me, Mom, not yet — if they did then in what language?

You go to touch and you touch right through them. Snug a breast and end up feeling up a boulder, flick a lip and end rubbing tongue against a sill.

They just hover, Mom, amongst their daily tasks — gathering water they won’t drink, steaming suppers they cannot eat, but I can.

I am sustained, they take good care, don’t worry.

I’ve even stopped asking after Moc.

I’m sure, one day, I’ll notice her appearance. As a shadow’s missing features. As faced light thrown across a wall that is not home’s.

Your message has been sent.

My message has been sent.

_________________

Emission

abajournal.com/news/article/paralegal_sues_over_herpes_web_post/

McDonald’s

mcdonalds.com/us/en/food.html

The College Borough

pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/79001603.pdf

Sent

iafd.com/person.rme/perfid=RRosenberg/gender=m/Robert-Rosenberg.htm

Joshua Cohenwas born in 1980 in New Jersey. He is the author of five previous books, including Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, A Heaven of Others, and Witz. His nonfiction has appeared in Bookforum, the Forward, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, and other publications. He lives in New York City.

Book design by Ann Sudmeier. Composition by BookMobile Design and Publishing Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.