Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page

Terese Coe holds an MA in dramatic literature, and first wrote professionally as a drama critic for The Rocky Mountain Review in Salt Lake City, then as a columnist for The Wood River Journal in Idaho.

She has taught poetry workshops for advanced English students in Kathmandu, Nepal and for children in Idaho; has written several plays about artists and writers in New York; has worked for periodicals in positions which ranged from paste-up to writer to editor-in-chief; and was an actor with The Committee Workshop and the God's Eye Theatre in San Francisco in the late 60s.

She has traveled widely and given readings in Nepal as well as at St. Mark's Church and The Cedar Tavern in NY, was a 2000 and 2002 recipient of Giorno Poetry Systems grants and a 2003-4 finalist in the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize.

She now lives in downtown Manhattan, where she teaches English composition.

Her poems, translations, adaptations and reviews have appeared or will soon appear in Poetry, Threepenny Review, Nimrod, The Evansville Review, Blue Unicorn, The Shakespeare Newsletter, The Formalist, Light, First Things, Orbis (UK), Pivot, Leviathan Quarterly (UK), The Edge City Review, and in a number of online journals including Verse Daily, Triplopia and The Alsop Review.

She received Pushcart nominations in 2003 and 2004.

The Everyday Uncommon, won a Word Press Publication prize and was published in 2005.

Night

And now the moon, the comely, milk-filled moon,
breasts the sky to her commanding height,
bearer of enigma, whispered rune,
raising to her all who drink her light.

Slugs

Though in Nankin
they're known as yin
ingredients in drugs,
no nincompoop
would prize the soup
prepared with baby slugs.
A slug does not
reflect a lot
on whether he's obscene,
but given slime
at dinnertime,
make do with new cuisine.

Yet Another Triumph from the Pharmaceutical Industry
("Boys in Florida developed lactating breasts after taking Resperdal..." - NYTimes)

Is your son a schiz?
Is he throwing fits?
Are his friends all wrecks,
and obsessed with sex?
Though it's not our intent
to experiment,
there's a simple cure
for the immature.
He'll soon be more tender
than all his gender-
don't make it an issue.
Just give him a tissue.

© Terese Coe