Soothing Songs

by Cat Dixon

Art: Cyrus Carlson

The first notes of Leonard Cohen’s Tacoma Trailer

end credits to an epic love story—envelop us in this

frigid Michigan night. We're away from theater spotlights,

away from flashing bulbs, from the rope around my

neck, from the ballroom where you twirled me—

I lost my balance. I never understood dance. These chords

swell like waves that touch the shore back home. The salt,

the echo, the curve of your ear—all seashell-like—swirl

inside this song and a drop of hope for a happy ending  

lives on. A drop of hope for a happy ending poisons

the well, the ground water, the rivers, the lakes, the Atlantic

Ocean. I never understood dance or love stories,

never visited the trailer where you waited for the call to set.

Cat Dixon's newest poetry collection, What Happens in Nebraska, was released from Stephen F. Austin University Press in November. Cat is a poetry editor with The Good Life Review. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and has been published in numerous literary magazines including recently in Rise Up Review, SWWIM Every Day, Coffin Bell Journal, and Potomac Review.