Memory Foam

Why stop there?
I want memory

underwear and a memory
chair. The stair

should be a memory
stair, wherever I

appear should remember
me, and you, when

we first meet, since
you’ve been laboring—

I guess—like the rest
of us, as a memory

apprentice, can step
inside my undulations.

Come, remind me
why we bend.

First appeared in Furs Not Mine (Four Way Books, 2015)

Andrea Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her previous poetry collections include The Cartographer’s Vacation, winner of the Owl Creek Poetry Prize, Long Division, and Kentucky Derby. She has received a PEN Discovery Award,Glimmer Train’s Short Fiction Award, and several residencies at The MacDowell Colony. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA, and the Writer’s House at Merrimack College.