Bio
Douglas Cole has published six poetry collections and the novel The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. His work has appeared in journals such as Beloit Poetry, Fiction International, Valpariaso, The Gallway Review and Two Hawks Quarterly; as well anthologies such as Bully Anthology (Hopewell), Coming Off The Line (Main Street Rag Publishing), the Bindweed Anthology, and Work (Unleash Press).
He contributes a regular column, “Trading Fours,” to the magazine, Jerry Jazz Musician. He also edits the American writers section of Read Carpet, a journal of international writing produced in Columbia.
In addition to the American Fiction Award, his screenplay of The White Field won Best Unproduced Screenplay award in the Elegant Film Festival and was twice selected as a finalist in the New York Metropolitan Screenwriting Contest. He has been awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial prize in poetry, the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House, First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway, and the Editors’ Choice Award in fiction by RiverSedge. He has been nominated Six times for a Pushcart and seven times for Best of the Net. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington.
Trigger Warning
There’s an alone so alone the mind starts to eat itself—
it begins with edges of memory gone like eroded beaches,
the clean solid wall fading between you and your dreams—
now the phantoms and the kid catchers run loose,
ripping up your garden. You’ve lost your public face!
Anyone other than the government would think you’ve gone
out of your mind—babbling out loud, thinking without cover.
Mirrors are assassins. The stove wants to sing.
These aren’t my cats pawing at the windows, eyes making clear
what they’ll do if they get in. You’ll just have to imagine
the psychic sandbags I’ve stacked at every door,
the dwindling provisions, the escape pod on the roof
I climb into when the firefighters bashed through the walls.