Trading Addictions
For this week’s throwback, we are delighted to share with you two pieces by Tobi Cogswell.
‘Sleepwalker’ began life as a short story and was distilled into a poem. And ‘Concerns About the Cake’ is a poem disguised as a short story.
But however you define them, these poem-stories, excerpted here from Issue 6, Spring 2015, are sure to intrigue.
Sleepwalker
I.
She started sleepwalking in her forties. Once she woke up outside. The cold in the bricks seeped into her bare feet and shocked her awake. She rarely went out on the patio awake. Several times they had gone out there, heads upturned to catch a meteor shower, but light pollution from the beachfront fogged out the stars.
II.
She wasn’t always angry. At first he was a smile in her day. She used to say that if
she sneezed in her apartment at the beach, he would call her from his house 20 miles away to say “bless you.” That blessing was short-lived.
III.
She knew addicts sometimes traded addictions; she didn’t recognize she was the addiction. She never thought about how lonely she would feel when the addict passed on to other pursuits.
Concerns About the Cake
Frank had never tasted buttercream that brought tears to his eyes, so when he said “I have concerns about the cake” it was from a place in his head that had nothing to do with his heart.
Frank was like that, always trying to find the logic in the illogical. Always trying to write a proof to justify feelings in the way he taught geometry. That’s why some part of him appreciated Lisa. He could not write an equation to solve for trust but he trusted her. She might come home one day with wild pink hair just for fun, but it went to a place in him kept just for the occasions of Lisa.
The first time they met he was grading papers at the local coffee house. It was a gorgeous day, so he was outside. His only nod to the nice weather was a pair of knee-length shorts and no socks. He had his back to the sun, and his head down, red pen going a mile a minute — he always wanted his students to show their work. Sometimes they had the right answers for the wrong reasons. Frank had to explain what they’d done wrong or incomplete and why they were getting half credit.
Read on, in your copy of Issue 6, Spring 2015, ON SALE until August 31st!
Tobi Cogswell is a Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review. Find her work on Amazon.
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