m review — poetry — cohabitation
Cohabitation
by Terri Hopkins
I am surrounded by other people's nouns.
Soderstrom's house, which he did not expect
would shelter our lives instead of his.
Out all doors: Marlene's garden
one of many, but this one made for us,
these loose, rambling spireas,
this slow curve of lawn caressed weekly
by Bob's riding mower, now in the garage.
Keeping company with Sam's boxes of belongings
carefully labeled "junk," Adam's Transformers —
once in perfect order on his windowsill —
Autobots and Decepticons, and home for the summer,
Sarah's sports bras, hang drying in the laundry room.
On a cultural note, in the half bath: Prochaska's drawing
of a man leaning on a giant screwdriver, and Warnock's linocut
of a woman sewing her arm back on like so much piece work.
Near the piano, Mangold's silkscreened comingled square, arc and rectangle,
raise questionable mathematical relationships and more importantly,
less tractable riddles, like: Why yellow?
And my self — some composite not quite of my own making —
eddying, pooling, brushing up against them all.
Terri Hopkins of Oregon
Terri Hopkins is a member of the Marylhurst University art faculty. Since 1980, she has been the director and curator of The Art Gym at Marylhurst University.
