Terese Coe

It Cracks Open

Reunion

It is not man’s inhumanity to woman, woman’s 
inhumanity to man, but possibility, and they go 
from the house to where they’re hidden 
behind the car to take each other in, his arms
spread out to her with his magnanimous 
Lucien grin. Tossed-off, out of sight of 
family inside, they grip hard and hold 
a universe driving on its own, careening 
through plant, water, living creature, 
energy curling back in on itself. Capricious 
as another time 35 years ago and now 
reeling back with a vengeance. The warmth 
of the soil, the sky cascading in silence. She
gets into the driver’s seat of the unfamiliar 
rental, says Can you turn on the dashboard 
lights? He lets out his breathy laugh, knowing
the stage-light neon will blind. In the night’s 
shocking psychedelic flashback he slides 
her over and drives off with her. They 
will leave off the surge and make what 
they will of it. Nails, writing, hammering.  

Terese Coe’s poems and translations appear in The Interpreter’s House, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, The Moth, New American Writing, New Scotland Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Threepenny Review, and the TLS, among others. Her collection Shot Silk was short-listed for the 2017 Poets Prize. Her most recent book is Why You Can’t Go Home Again from Kelsay Books, and her black comedy, Harry Smith at the Chelsea Hotel, was recently presented at Dixon Place, NY.