Poetry by Amy Cook

Carl Wycoff CC



Oh, the letter begins

I am doing well in this moment,
the ebb of light only cumbersome
when I circle again to self-sorrow and a cover-less pillow,
actively bracing against the homesick, with my toes.
Unincorporated Tacoma is a breathing place to grieve
what isn’t yours yet.
You made decisions this time that rot over days like uncorked wine.

I said no (help) in many ways,
mostly by the unlooking,
but also by taletelling
and running as quickly
as I could from the water.
The Water - was it even warm?

I paid for our meal,
And then I said no help, again
And again.

When I am later swept away and dusted
by the twister of missing, 
I will see places everywhere
where I abandoned people for words.

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Amy Cook is an MFA candidate at Pacific Lutheran University (Rainier Writing Workshop), and participated in the 2021 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in Creative Nonfiction.  Her work has been featured in more than two dozen literary journals, magazines and anthologies, including Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, great weather for MEDIA, The Other Journal and Apricity Press. She was a finalist for the 2023 ProForma competition (Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts), a finalist for the Disruptors Contest (TulipTree Publishing, 2021), a semi-finalist for the 2022 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize, and received an Honorable Mention from the New Millennium Writing Awards (2022). She is a reader for the literary magazine CRAFT.