by Jordan Cobb
fourteen years old / Virginia Suburbs
The old house settled onto the serpentine drive, siding melted
from a grill fire only my father & I witnessed.
The sleepover, the best friend’s older brother. There was never
another. Fresh-pressed orange juice in the morning from their mother.
I resented E for ages, for the secrets she kept, the warnings red,
the monster who refused to stay beneath the bed.
After winter, the summer, too hot to capture the condensation
for long. Stormclouds gathered into a gasping resuscitation.
The lightning struck through the iron, into the garden. Massacre
of flower beds, scorched stretch marks. Perpetual rupture.
eighteen years old / St. Paul’s Cathedral, Pittsburgh
The little girls’ rhyme in my mind: here is the church,
here is the steeple. Open the door & see all the people.
My favorite place to hide.
Mahogany pews. Unpolished prayer. Hands folded
like paper cranes or mornings. Mornings, empty
as footsteps & tombs.
Only the stained glass & me. No hanging, no body
on the cross this time. The unexpected relief of statues
from nudity & death.
A wedding, party staggered on the steps. Photographs
as doves, brighter than mourning, released into the wind,
high as Icarus.
twenty-three years old / Kyoto, Japan
The fuschia tongues of the
cherry blossoms unseam each
spring. Petals quiver
like scripture on their passage;
the bewilderment of earth.
Some scatter in the
canal, move like molasses:
a lazy river.
Against etiquette,
to climb into the wet, tire-
tubed & frivolous.
How so many circles look
like zeroes; negative space.
twenty-six years old / Reykjavik, Iceland
Plateau of unplowed snow.
Fields of January.
The begotten birthday,
deathday,
Make-A-Wish day.
First position, second position,
plié: pirouettes in the sky. Lights, pale & stuttering
across the longest midnight.
Ears protected by knitted wool,
skeins of pink & blue.
There you are, alive.
There I am, with you.
Jordan Cobb is a queer American poet based in NYC. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2025. Her work has recently appeared in Crab Creek Review, SWWIM, Shō Poetry Journal, & The McNeese Review, among others. She is @on_the_cobb on Instagram.
Emerge Literary Journal 