Even when Death inhabits a poem, he does not own it. He is a squatter. In fact, Death owns nothing. – Todd Moore
Lorraine Jesus, the last thing I needed was for Lenny’s female friend to snuff it in my house. I told Ma Crystal had refused to take her insulin: the results, predictable as a fixed race. She overdosed on smack, her Continue reading Lorraine by Robert Cooperman
Lenny Ma’s a bitch, me grieving for Crystal, who’d just O.D.’ed on top of the insulin she’d stopped taking, and Ma made me bury her behind her swamp shack, Ma too busy—plotting how to separate Grandma from her bank accounts, Continue reading Lenny by Robert Cooperman
Grandma Rose The girl was twenty-one, the one who died last Friday in my daughter’s house. Not an overdose, my Lorraine swears of my grandson’s girlfriend: she’d stopped taking insulin, screaming she could go cold turkey even after her face Continue reading Grandma Rose by Robert Cooperman
Crystal—The Dead Girl I knew I wasn’t going to have a long, boring life: not with Mom shooting smack even when quacks warned what it would do to me. The wonder of it: I went before her, me trying, most Continue reading Crystal—The Dead Girl by Robert Cooperman
Nose Ring Your daughter wants a nose ring, the way, you refrain from taunting her, she once whined for a pet pony. Now, she’s twenty-one, spending the summer teaching in France, and assumes a nose ring is part of the Continue reading Five poems by Robert Cooperman