The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Stress Positions by Marion Deutsche Cohen

This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Amanda Judd, is from Stress Positions by Marion Deutsche Cohen, released by Alien Buddha Press in 2020.

Comforting, 2003

I was waking up in the middle of the night and my new love asked, ”Are 
you okay?”

“Not quite,” I said. “For some reason I’m thinking about those kinds of 
movies where the bad guys tie up the good guy and bury him under ten 
feet of cement. He’d be so alone, nobody would see him or hear him or 
know he’s there, suffocating, not even God.”

My new love shuffled on over and took me in his arms, crooning, one 
atheist to another, “Don’t worry, God can see through cement. God can 
see through cement

Marion Deutsche Cohen is known, in particular, for her writings (poetry and memoir) on three topics: spousal chronic illness, late pregnancy loss, and math. She is the author of 33 books; her newest poetry collection is Negative Aspects (dancing girl press), and her latest prose collection is Not Erma Bombeck: Diary of a Feminist 70s Mother (Alien Buddha Press). Forthcoming are Disturbing Shapes (New Plains Press) and Reasons and Remedies for Insomnia (dancing girl press). She teaches a course she developed, Mathematics in Literature, at Drexel University’s Honors College.

After a 25-year career as a paralegal, Amanda Valerie Judd returned to school to earn her AFA in Creative Writing from Normandale Community College. She is currently attending Southern New Hampshire University working to earn her BFA in Creative Writing – Poetry. In 2020, she won the Patsy Lea Core Prize for Poetry. In 2021, her poem “My Only Label” was nominated for “Best of the Net 2021.” Her work has been published or is forthcoming in PAN-O-PLY Magazine, MockingOwl Roost, Trouvaille Review, Prospectus, and Talking Stick 31.