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Cathryn
Cofell
BIO: Cathryn Cofell's wildly published poetry and essays can be found in New York Quarterly, Oranges & Sardines, MARGIE, Nerve Cowboy, Slipstream, Main Street Rag, Women, and many others. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her work (40ish at last count), including the Wisconsin People & Ideas John Lehman Poetry Award, the Wisconsin Academy's Outstanding Poem Award for two consecutive years and the Jade Ring, but mainly excels at being honorably mentioned (a.k.a. close but no cigar-o, a.k.a. two Pushcart Prize nominations, runner-up for the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award in 2008, finalist in MARGIE's Strong Medicine Contest and finalist for the Dirty Napkin's Gerald Stern Poetry Prize, just to name a few.
By day, Cathryn is a vp at a community foundation. Nights and weekends, she supplements that living doing poetry readings, writing workshops, speaking gigs and voice-over work. She is a sucker for a good cause, the arts heading the list—having served as an advisor to the Wisconsin Governor for the investigation and creation of a state Poet Laureate post, as founding two-term Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and on the board of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Free Verse Magazine, volunteers for the Fox Cities Bookfest, the Wisconsin Book Festival and as the pseudo-publicist for the Conkey's/Harmony Cafe-Fox Valley's Poetry Reading Series.
PUBLICATIONS:
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;
AVAILABLE AGAIN: 2nd printing 2009; $8.00
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.
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POEMS:
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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
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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)
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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.
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