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"Bingo", Mansion", "The Red Line", & "There is Yet Time" by Lynn Glicklich Cohen



BINGO


I find her in back, mid-game

around the table, playing 

two cards at once.


O-9, N-17, G-46…

Mini packets of Cracker Jack 

are today’s prize. She has won


three already. Her sweet tooth, suppressed

for decades, now thrives on jelly beans 

and ice cream. She doesn’t remember


it’s junk we don’t eat in this house. 

As cards are called… B-29. I-43. N-17… 

she full-on concentrates. Not long ago,


when invited to play, she had sneered,

For losers. It was awful 

when, between reading the Times


completing the Sunday crossword

and discussing politics, she could still track

her memory loss, could still reflect 


on her own mind. Now, like the child 

she never allowed herself to be, she thrills

over a complete row of plastic coins.


It should break my heart. But

it’s so much easier to love her

this way. 



MANSION


Fifty-two years later, I still dream 

of the house where I grew up, its pitched 

roof, mock-Tudor gables, and wainscoted walls.


Thick spring-green shag suffocated 

fine oak floors; heavy yellow brocade humiliated

the view of Lake Michigan with her tormented 


moods. Given life and left to figure it out,

we well-off, at-risk children fostered avoidance;

we seized what space we could for ourselves,


which, despite its size, was never enough.

Deprived of protection, we stashed secrets

in walk-in closets and yawning attic 


annexes, hid hopes inside the drafty shafts 

of disabled dumbwaiters. Unschooled

in the ways of rage, brothers became


autodidacts of abuse. Pleas and protests echoed 

off leaded stained-glass and high-beamed ceilings. 

Foreboding closed my throat like the swinging door 


between kitchen and formal dining room where I hid

to cry. Bedrooms were no barrier to the threat

of absence. Bruises barely hinted at the depth of harm. 


My older sister modeled love in the updated kitchen  

where orange-and-yellow daisy wallpaper lied 

about the dangers lurking upstairs. I watched her feed 


our Great Danes ground beef, cooked hot and sizzling, 

mixed into kibble with her bare hands, distributing pink

juice evenly, marbled linoleum floor slick with drool. 


(continued)

(Cohen, Mansion, page 2, new stanza)



Where she learned to nurture, I cannot say. She became 

a mother whose grown children still break her heart 

in big and small ways every day. I remain childless 


by choice, unpartnered by preference, a student 

of my upbringing. But so was she. Maybe our education 

doesn’t explain her grief-laden choices any more 


than my own. My black Lab and I are the same 

age in dog years, her perfect love guaranteed 

to leave me before I am ready. Every day, 


she teaches me that the space that is mine to fill 

is small indeed, and this is good news,

though I have yet to claim it.



THE RED LINE


Since you left, I have spent days gazing through glass

at the blazing Japanese maple, at the sparrows in the beech,

at the squirrels in the feeder foraging for nuts.


Come sundown, the rat ambles up, fat and slow; doesn’t flinch 

when I knock to scare him off. He lives under the deck. I’ve tried

baffles and traps, ammonia spray and high-pitched ultrasonic waves.


He always returns, like the song I loathe and can’t stop hearing—

the one about the serial killer, the one I asked you to stop playing. 

You’d make grotesque gestures instead of dance, mouth words


instead of sing. I teased you about your sublimated rage and your fetish

for violent death. We never fought, but used compromise like a weapon. 

You shaved your beard. I dyed my gray hair. You quit inside smoking. 


I cut drinking to weekends. Recently, you said I was foolish 

to think that there was only one rat, that if I was serious, 

I should put out poison. But first I would have to stop feeding the birds.


It came as a surprise to us both 

when I told you that was

the one thing I was unwilling to do. 



THERE IS YET TIME


We stand together in great darkness, some distance 

apart on the beach, to wait for sunrise. First a hint


of not-quite-night, a mirage perhaps, whisper

of color, blue maybe, maybe. A pastel hush 


of lavender in a skyward streak that a moment 

ago was not there. The sand is hard as a sidewalk.


My toes and fingers sting in the eye-watering wind.

Laced ice kisses the shore. An apricot-orange stripe


appears as a reward. Being human, we want more:

to cheer, applaud. Instead, slate-gray clouds blur


the horizon. Those who’d come for evidence

that, forget yesterday, today is another, return,


disappointed, to their cars. I get it. And I’m also relieved 

when they leave like guests after the party is over. 


The beach belongs to me and my dog, who wants 

her stick thrown again. Fetch, return, the point of life


being whatever is happening now—a botched sunrise 

on Lake Michigan as a winter storm rolls in. It’s the peril


and cringe of exposure, the balm and dread of being alone.

It’s the squirm and scrape and ache of making selfish


choices. I cannot be the only one with a voice inside

that says, “I don’t have to,” after I’ve already said I would.


I think I believe there is not enough of me to share.

What if I’m wrong?  


Maybe that is why I am restive as a cloud churning 

hot and cold, braced for lightning. 




Lynn Cohen has been published in Amelia, Amethyst Magazine, Brushfire

Literature and Arts Journal, Burmingham Arts Journal, Cantos, The

Chained Muse, El Portal, Evening Street Review, Flights, Front Range

Review, Grand Journal, The Midwest Quarterly, Oberon Poetry Magazine,

OPEN:Journal of Arts & Letters, Peregrine, The Phoenix, SLAB, Spotlong

Review, St. Katherine’s Review, Swamp Ape Review, Thin Air Magazine, and

Trampoline. Her novel, A Terrible Case of Beauty, was published by

Trebol Press in 2013. She received a Best of the Net nomination from

Apricity Magazine in 2023. Lynn has attended various writing

conferences, including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the

Columbia University Summer Writers’ Workshop. After a brief tenure in

the Jerusalem Symphony Radio Orchestra, Lynn received a Bachelors in

Music from the New England Conservatory of Music, concentrating in

double bass performance. She received a Masters of Social Work from

Simmons College in Boston and practiced as a clinical social worker for

several years in Boston and Baltimore. She then moved to Vermont and

received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston. She

has worked as a massage therapist and Certified Advanced Rolfer™ in Los

Angeles and Milwaukee. Lynn plays the cello and is quick with stir-fries

and pasta.

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