Cody Gohl

One’s history is a difficult thing to carry. There are all the obligations: to accuracy, to color, to aesthetics.

Feelings can crush us in two ways: they can terrify us into suppressing them or they can intoxicate us and leave us ravaged when they leave.

I will sometimes say things that are horrible and catty, things that are none of my business, things I wish I could shove back down my throat.

I hope that in spite of all this you’ll speak well of me and I hope it’s with a smile, the kind of smile that hides a little something at the corners, the kind of smile that people will ask you what are you smiling at?

He won’t be the most handsome or the most successful person you’ve ever met.

I don’t know how to wear his history and I’m afraid I do it clumsily like a toddler drowning in his father’s penny loafers.

She will not be Meg Ryan and you will not be the man that she has been waiting for with flowers and drawers full of her letters, but you will like her enough to try to be.

Three-point-three million dots breathing paint onto the canvas of this city.

I could read and reread all of these sonnets but would never glean half the meaning I wonder what it feels like to be a poet knowing that over half the world will only ever read your words in translation I wonder if that makes it worth it or if it just makes you feel small.