Untitled (Coke was taller than most women)
Coke was taller than most women and moved in a way that somehow provoked anticipation watching
her cross a room you wondered if this splendid thing would actually happen to you same with her voice
with everything she’d say and I remember that her eyes were grey
and Jimmy once Jimmy kissed me I couldn’t have been more than fourteen when Jimmy kissed me
his mouth seemed to take me over and afterwards I ran away but stayed kissed all afternoon
I saw Coke on the bus wearing a mink jacket one morning and big diamonds looking a handsome late
thirties on her second marriage twelve year old child and she says Jimmy’s got his masters degree and his
wife’s a nurse and Coke says that Mileage whose black moon face and joke on you laughter used to
frighten me has passed away
Untitled (when things get bad enough)
when things get bad enough
I start wishing I would die.
actually, I had intended to say,
when things get bad enough
I start wishing other people would die
so I would be left
the pleasures of abandonment.
you mentioned the word suicide today
I caught it in my teeth and
carried it home to put in a poem.
I am not respectful enough its true
of me of you
but thank you for the word.
Untitled (I have a small book)
I have a small book with yellow covers and half translucent pages. I thought of using it as a drawing
book but never did because I imagined the drawings would bleed through to each other in disturbing
ways. but now I have the idea of making my first drawing on the last page of the book, so I can see it as I
draw on the page that comes before. that way I can design that second drawing to relate to the first.
and so on.
An artist and a poet, Ditta Baron Hoeber’s poems have been published in a number of magazines including Noon: journal of the short poem, Gargoyle, the American Journal of Poetry, Juxtaprose, Pank, Burningword Literary Journal, the American Poetry Review, and Contemporary American Voices. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her first book, Without You, is forthcoming in March of 2024. Her photographs, drawings, and book works have been exhibited nationally and acquired by several collections in the US and the UK.
