Julie Cooper-Fratrik

My work is an examination/exploration of the myriad forms which desire may assume, especially as it manifests itself in language play, relationships among women, between women and children, and within the natural world. I am also interested in the "spaces" in which art and love (desire) exist; and to that end, in addition to lyrical poetry, I am working on a book-length manuscript (A)nna (M)orphous: days, which is primarily a language/free association work, and a book-length philosophical essay, Beyond the Objects of Affection: The Space of the Artist in the Space of the World.
 

from COMING HOME
(Theme With Three Variations and Repetitions)

Who will hear us, who will come?
Who will take us home?
Vahan Derian

(Beyond the dark sorrow, there may be a woman calling)

1.
her breathlessness gathers me home.
I search for a place that existed in time
(Is it she?)
before the dark sorrow.


I search for a place that existed in time.
cool grass crept to its waist
(before the dark sorrow).
cicadas lined up on the sill.


cool grass crept to its waist,
bees lazed in plums' burst seams,
cicadas lined up on the sill
that intoxicating summer.

bees lazed in plums' burst seams,
and the waist of a woman, like a small o
(that intoxicating summer)
tightened in the curve of darkness.

and the waist of a woman, like a small o,
(Is it she?)
tightened in the curve of darkness.
her breathlessness gathers me home.

2.
There may be a woman
in the evening dark
leaning from her window,
waiting.


In the evening dark,
the hand writes
"waiting
for summer's solace."

The hand writes
(in winter chill)
"for summer's solace
holds the world together."

In winter chill,
her hand on the sill
holds the world together,
dreaming.

Her hand on the sill,
leaning from her window,
dreaming,
there may be a woman.