Ross Cohen

Ross Cohen Poems

Ross Cohen Biography

Ross Cohen graduated from Eckerd College in 2008 with a degree in English Literature. He currently teaches high school English in Alamo, Texas. Ross occasionally reads his poems at Steel City Coffee House in Pheonixville, Pennsylvania where he can also be seen performing songs. Ross cites T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, and Leonard Cohen as his primary influences.)

The Best Poem Of Ross Cohen

Daphne And Apollo

I could never compete with you
Lightfoot, skipping across the moss
and stone.
I crashed through tangled woods,
Ripping roots from the earth,
Snapping branches, clearing a path by force.

You were a speck in my eye,
Just visible behind the vines;
A mirage on an empty plain.
I could never see you directly,
I could never sleep where you had lain.

I had grown accustomed to the dip
And dive of your back cutting
Through the clearing where,
Panting and parched, we stopped
For a fatal moment.

You turned. The war
Between flame and stream,
Between you and me,
Swelled to crisis:

Your skin cracks and grays
Like cooling embers; the ground surrenders
To toe-roots; thighs stiffen and petrify;
Bark works its way up
To the bole-knot in your stomach.

Shoulders and arms explode
Into clouds of flickering green and gold.
Soft shrapnel litters the ground.

Sitting beneath the sole tree
In the forest’s barren place,
I sift through the leaves
For the memory of your face.

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