Poem: Ravine

Publication: Voices from the Attic, Volume XXVII, a publication of The Madwomen in the Attic (Carlow University, Pittsburgh, PA)

Publication date: November 2021

Ravine

The silence

in the absence of other people stretches out

so far

I can wrap myself up in it,

and all the small lives in the treetops

the grass & between the stones speak to me for a while.

I wish I could talk back,

differentiate the hoarse nag of the wintering blue jay

from the call of the crow, one soul to another,

strolling across the lawn like girlfriends on their way to brunch.

Later, I stand at the edge of the woods

stare into the thick mothering maw of it

and think

of ravines

of hunters

chasing deer into that final trap,

unloading bullets

of men who do not believe in swift, merciful, necessary deaths

animal-to-animal, on nature’s terms

& of the ravine falling quiet again, after the death.

Poem: Glory Be

Publication: Time of Singing vol. 48

Publication date: July 2021

GLORY BE

I. as it was in the beginning

“Where is your faith?”

In a single cell on the ocean floor

that grew into the world around it,

a world so bright it created its own eyes

& forced them to open to light.

In the fingerprints that time preserved,

in existing and returning,

in knowing I am not the first, or the last.

II. is now, and ever will be

The dead discard their shrouds

pull the earth about their shoulders.

An Owl stands guard

the only witness,

Her voice is lost on the wind.

All the world is still when the snow blows in.

Under that frozen down,

we are all the same again.

III. world without end

I don’t know if there is a heaven

or what happens when we die

though I am open to the possibilities.

What I do know

is that to become dust

ground to dirt

grown to green

is a kind of afterlife

& that is enough

for me.

-Faith Cotter

*Title & italicized words taken from the doxology “Gloria Patri”

Link to PDF version of the poem here:

glory-be_time-of-singingDownload

Poem: Demeter’s Task

PUBLICATION: Pittsburgh Poetry Journal

PUBLICATION DATE: January 6, 2020

DEMETER’S TASK

by Faith Cotter

When my daughter emerges from the depths of the sea she cries

Momma, Momma

My boat is ready; it needs no wind to sail to her.

When I reach her

she slips through my hands and the water consumes her once more,

blank mind and body blind.

I anchor the boat and wait. Sea shells are scattered at my feet—

other people’s lost daughters.

These girls come to me, to draw me close and press their lips against my ear,

a witness to their howls.

From island to shoreline, I wait for my girl

be she a sea sprite

or stitched and shrouded.

When I first felt her move, suspended in that amniotic lake,

she felt like the flick of a goldfish tail, and I remember smiling to myself.

The mirthless souls of drowned girls lured me to the water, once

and I wonder if I have damned my daughter to hidden currents.

Anchor. Wait.

Always, I wait.

Ready to catch her once more

bidding the currents to stagnate

the weather to hold—

trying to find a word to call a mother who has lost her child.

The Bell Tower Reached for the Heavens

Title: The Bell Tower Reached for the Heavens/Exploring a Pittsburgh Masterpiece: The East Liberty Presbyterian Church

Final Project: Writing for Digital Media

Publication Date: December 12, 2015

Link: https://faithcpwr662.atavist.com/eastlibertychurch

 

 

 

Poetry: The Bone Daughter

Publication: ZO Magazine

Publication Date: November 7, 2015

I do not want all of these extra spaces
carved inside me, and outside, too
I do not want the blood
or the family tree with rotten leaves twisted ‘round the branches.

My grandmother loved music. She went to a very good school for it,
half a century ago.
During her eulogy, this part of her was grounded down, like warm bones
fresh out of the crematorium (fire is not enough to splinter them).
Music was eclipsed by the man who was not a good man
and she will be buried beside him, her decay joining his
as the blood mixes with water when it falls out of us
even if we never want what it brings
and sometimes, even when we do (the body is not always enough to build).

My family is a family of daughters who were
Born inside out
(with a cleft lip)
My family is a family where
Daughters are dragged underground.

It only takes one person on the tree.
Their roots will extend too far out.
I want to go to the resting places of my grandfathers
and write “rapist” on one headstone and “breaker of bones” on the other

In many ways, I feel like the first daughter who was dragged under,
the one who is responsible for the changing of the seasons.
Though in my story, she is willingly
emptying her insides and outsides,
ridding herself of unwanted space.
In the morning, her eyes receded into her skull
In the afternoon her skin peeled away and
In the evening the rest of her—her heart and her kidneys and her lungs—
tumbled out and she left them where they fell,
a daughter made only of her sturdiest remains—
Queen of the damned,
who jangles when she walks through the streets and the hillsides,
not for jewels placed at her wrists or the flimsy dip of her throat,
but for the absence of meat to swallow the sound between her bones.