https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
http://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998
Poems by Miriam Kotzin
Whether Weather
1.
Today I wake to rain that thrums its song:
rain drums the sills and taps the idle leaves.
A restless wind just sighs and moves along.
Today I wake to rain that thrums its song,
sweet reassurance that nothing is wrong
though heavy with bloom the peony grieves.
Today I wake to rain that thrums its song:
rain drums the sills and taps the idle leaves.
2.
The fickle wind is mischievous today.
It kisses your cheek and musses your hair.
Wind snatches your hat and sails it away.
The fickle wind is mischievous today—
first it twirls low, then it swirls high. "Come play!
I'm here!" it says then rushes over there.
The fickle wind is mischievous today.
It kisses your cheek and musses your hair.
Night Landscape with Mobile
Going on midnight,
a farmhouse porch light flickers
in the summer rain.
Broken yellow lines confer
driveway and empty school bus.
Its stop sign, folded
back, angles to a wounded wing.
The night wind whimpers.
Flat red tigers circle above
a fevered child in fitful sleep.
Miriam N. Kotzin teaches creative writing and literature at Drexel University. Her collection of short fiction, Country Music (Spuyten Duyvil Press 2017), joins a novel, The Real Deal (Brick House Press 2012), and a collection of flash fiction, Just Desserts (Star Cloud Press 2010). She is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, Debris Field (David Robert Books 2017). Her fiction and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Boulevard, Smoke Long Quarterly, Eclectica, Mezzo Cammin, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other periodicals, and in anthologies. She is a contributing editor of Boulevard.