Julia Cohen

BABY FOAM

What is a baby?
Less.

What is babyless?
The body of it, a velvet tug.
What is babylessness?
Less.
Less than what?
Less is for liquid
A reduction of milk or witch hazel, a switch
in the body.

Less than a baby is another body.
A full body of babyless.
Ness.
To drive through the godless night
only seeing blackness but knowing
there are mountains on either side of the road.

What is a babyless body?
The archive toweling dry.

A flock of coffee mugs
warming on the radiator,
a new one for each thirst.

The archive with all clothes hanging
in the same size.

If foam is liquid over air taking
a solid shape,
in babylessness is
foam less or fewer?

A knife-like nightlight.

Why is babylessness a typo.
What is incorrect?
A baby of
ness.

JULIA COHEN is an interview columnist at Tarpaulin Sky. She is the author of a hybrid collection of essays, I Was Not Born (Noemi), and two poetry collections, Collateral Light (Brooklyn Arts Press) and Triggermoon Triggermoon (Black Lawrence). Her nonfiction and poetry appear in BOMB, Boston Review, Entropy, Fence, Juked, Nat.Brut, and The Rumpus. She teaches poetry, literature, and composition at a community college in Chicago.