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Sort of Coping

Why is anyone in the world so terrible. Real catastrophe
and catastrophizing. If we only knew when it was going to
happen.

I saw you put your hands on the floor. Intimacy without
disturbances.
The scope here of memorization, planets. The history of children

sitting still. You are so cute in all your facebook photos.
When you moved to Portland I forgot we used to call you

Tumbleweed Tex. All those barking dogs, feathered hair.
We have something in common I never mention. I wish

I’d written it down and folded it into one of your piles
saying I want to read every one of these books! Do you think

you’ll have read them all before the end of time. Did you go in
to see her when she was dead. Maybe you already knew.

Farrah Field is the author of Wolf and Pilot (Four Way Books, 2011). She lives in Brooklyn where she is also the coowner of Berl’s Poetry Shop.

About Farrah Field

Themes

Loss

About this Poem

“‘Sort of Coping’ came out of a writing assignment Kate Schapira, poet and author of The Soft Place, assigned to our audience at Berl’s, a poetry-only bookstore in Brooklyn that I co-run with my partner, poet Jared White. I was trying to compose a letter to Uriah Heep, David Copperfield’s antagonist, perhaps trying to address his terribleness, yet realizing what we have in common is loss.”
—Farrah Field

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More by this poet

Blue Is Beautiful Amy but the Story Is So the '90s

I wanted to be the one who thought of truck bed walls.
You locked yourself in the bathroom
so I couldn’t brush my teeth before bed.
Where is this going and will it be successful? I hate bullies.
She’s been everywhere she even heard
the shot that killed John Lennon.
From now on I’m sticking up
for myself. My notes and to-do’s have flowers.
I don’t want to die. I feel scared all the time.
What you looked like as a child is clear.
The way you run from the hot tub
and throw yourself in the pool.
When they were joining the EU.

Farrah Field

2013

Amy Check On My Square Inch of Land

You didn't win the Cyndi Lauper look-alike contest
at the skating rink. Pretending to understand 

you're in therapy. How long do you spend
thinking about women's arms.

We were supposed to do it 23 times before we broke up.
To honor the day we met.

Suddenly everyone values
at home child care
now that men do it.

You want someone you don't have to care about
because you're in love with a dead man.

At the end of every summer you can't
remember the last time you wore pants.

Farrah Field

2012

Intensities of Emphasis and Wonder

The sleeping one is erect and mumbles.
The room went Arctic overnight

and his foot peeks outside the covers.
You leave his warm slumber

five minutes before the new hour,
stomach growling, and possible

moon somewhere. There's slight moisture
still.

Farrah Field

2009

Poems

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Sort of Coping

More by this poet

Blue Is Beautiful Amy but the Story Is So the '90s

Amy Check On My Square Inch of Land

Intensities of Emphasis and Wonder

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