Poetry By Kelli Cole

        Pete CC



Girl


Fatherless fraction of a waif in Luv-its
All legs and teeth and fear and silence
Quietly apart, taking it in and holding it
in a tensely held breath
Fists and gut clenched
Snoopy poster reads: 
If it feels good, overdo it

Cosmo sophisticates in high rise dreams
Salinger siblings and lizard kings
Better worlds in music 
books and magazines
Escape from the small world after all
Menthols in the bathroom:
You’ve come a long way, baby.

Liquid salvation giving sound 
to voices long suppressed
Elation and possibilities and 
rolled vehicles and morning terrors
and guilt, Until silence again
Private anguish leads to private fixes
That don’t fix anything at all

Who was she, that waif, that 
drunken dreamer?
The years have dimmed her memory;
Was she this same person, 
or another person entirely?
I want to tell her after it gets really bad
somehow it will all turn out good.



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Kelli Cole lives in the suburbs of Denver and is drawn to writing poems that deal with the struggles and triumphs she’s endured.