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Cathryn Cofell

BIO: Cathryn Cofell’s work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, MARGIE, NY Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Rattle, and many others. She is the recipient of over 30 awards for poetry, including two Pushcart Prize nominations, the WRWA Jade Ring for Poetry and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters Outstanding Poem Award for 2 consecutive years.
      When she’s not working her non-profit day job or chasing her non-stop son around the neighborhood, she is a passionate advocate for the arts: she served as an advisor to the Wisconsin Governor for creation of a state Poet Laureate, two terms as founding Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and two terms as an officer of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets where she continues to be an active member and volunteer. She is a frequent keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, panel presenter and guest poet at venues throughout Wisconsin, but makes Appleton her home.

PUBLICATIONS:
JUST RELEASED! Kamikaze Commotion, Parallel Press, 2008: $12.00
Sweet Curdle
, Marsh River Editions, 2006; $12.00
Roadkill, Neville Public Museum of Brown County, 2003; OUT OF PRINT
Tiny Little Crushes, Lockout Press, 2002; OUT OF PRINT
Between the Sheets (anthology of work from The Sheets), Perma Press, 2002; $6.00
Her Religion, Hodge Podge Press, 1998; OUT OF PRINT

All prices include postage; make checks payable to Cathryn Cofell
.

ccofell@new.rr.com

1424 S. Alicia Drive,
Appleton, WI 54914

 

    POEMS:

VIRTUAL FRIEND

We are a marriage of morse code,
click click clack
on a keyboard means
what a great blouse, where did you get it
and aren’t the stars like Peacocks tonight?
We live in the same city
but my car was repossessed
and a man has locked you in
like Rapunzel,
you weed-whacking your hair. 
I try to be your electronic prince,
attach pictures of whistling men
turning into wieners,
snippets of poems meant to enrage you
to signal S — O — S,
but I am from the wrong story,
I am naked
and don’t know it,
everyone is laughing
at my jiggling flesh
as I search house to house—
have you seen my friend
with the flaming hair and daffodils?
She was right here a minute ago.
I turned to check my lipstick
and she vanished.

Sample Poem from Kamikaze Commotion, Parallel Press 2008
First Appeared on ProseToad.com and in One Trick Pony #10

KAMIKAZE

After he died we turned
the power off and the noise
got better for awhile

but then summer came
and even though we kept
all the windows closed
some small hole crept open

and we began to fill with moths
and fireflies and creatures  
much too small to name

until a million thrumming wings
beat a symphony in every pore
and we pulsed inside out
fluorescent from forfeit.

Giving in was giving up but
it was right before the end
that light that brilliant light.

Sample Poem from Kamikaze Commotion, Parallel Press 2008
Previously Published in Comstock Review, Vol 16 #2 (Finalist, Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award)

MS. CONCEPTION

She came into my yard like a lost dog,
sniffing about the house,
peeing in all the corners.
She came into my yard
like scattered newspapers,
section one, page one,
to be continued. 
She is all canary, she clears mines,
she is mustard on a new pair of pants.
I call her Lucille,
loose as a wheel,
one act play, silk sheets
but no cigarette.

She came at me with that ballsy bronze voice,
said there’s a song in this mess
do you hear it?

Where does she get off talking to me
like that,
breaking my back like a snap pea?
It’s late and I’m tired,
all that damn carrying on,
the next door screaming baby, the howling
at the fence.
Get out of my yard, go home,
take my vacant womb like a chew toy,
a ruby on your finger,
a pink flamingo,
take it and go,
just stop scratching at my door,
stop barking in my night.

Sample Poem from Sweet Curdle, Marsh River Editions, 2006
Reprinted from Prairie Schooner by permission of the University of Nebraska Press.  Copyright 2002 University of Nebraska Press.