If Fire, Arrival by Julia Cohen

Julia Cohen's new chapbook, If Fire, Arrival, done up by horse less press (no caps), is a wonderful, if the so far only, introduction to the work of a wonderful poet. A girl in woman's clothing, a Mac-user who has probably never held a pen in her entire life, Cohen's poems here are her declarations of independence from independence, high school notes passed directly to the trashcan because, like, friends are so yesterday. I just want to be young again, and alone and in nature, but with the assurance of love and an internet connection.
These poems despite the forms imposed seem unmade, or seem still unhealed, forever; here childhood isn't any longer a state, or a life to be outgrown, otherwise pardoned; innocence is not the unconscious naive, it's the willed vague. We know only that we don't want to know. Around us is "something akin to weather". Huddle near. "Tell another bedtime story when you leave" ...

Reins

When buckets and pails were our favorite words/units of measure what
did you want that the pretty day continue into pretty days

The photo booth took polaroids of nipples and neck my head was never
in the picture where is the culpability when we say The past or It passed

I whitewashed the disturbing symmetry to give you - Dare you to find
what is more disturbing than a slate scraped clean

Is pure freedom what exists without love let's not paraphrase I never
said let it go or take me back I said tangle