List of remains left in my keeping:
Nikkita Cohoon

Jar One

Remains stationary:

Sits on a table, empty. When I saw it, I told someone else to take it home—didn’t know how to fill it and I could hear it laughing.


Jar Two

Stored on a chain that hangs from left wrist:

Grandfather’s eyeballs are of course contained here; the blue is not so brilliant, glazed by death and no longer shaded by lids. A scrap of purple robe our mothers stole one Christmas absorbs the moisture that tears create from time to time. The gold plated pipe creates negative spaces to keep my own eyes from hazing. His flowered davenport was a tight fit but we saved it for the power it gave him to sleep.

In reviewing the contents I’ve decided to keep his sight for myself.


Jar Three

Sits between the two front seats of my car and I rummage through it habitually:

Nothing but buttons.


Jar Four

A two part mixture given to me by my mother:

Here too, a set of eyes because my grandmother always remarked on my hawk-like vision. We made silly putty impressions while we mastered the English language with a sharp tongue.


Jars Five Through Sixteen

Marked MEMORABILIA -- BASEMENT -- STORAGE, rescued from darkness though it temporarily resides in my bedroom closet:

Hundreds of eyes; brittle illuminations with acidic stained backings; tattered photo corners; cobweb writing I try so hard to decipher; the last letter she wrote, her own eyes on the future (vision so impeccably clear), or was it her mothers she later projected?

These have yet to be properly catalogued, an incomplete list.


Jar Seventeen

The smallest in the collection, gripped often in right palm like some sort of talisman:

Holds only air but weighs heavily anyway.


Jar Eighteen

A beacon similar to a jar in Tennessee (not in my possession), guarded by one of the dogs who roams Pompeii:

Here some bone fragments (unidentified) -- held in an open-air shed that hugs shadows, holds ruins -- clatter against the glass, reach past grey for sunlight.

1996 © 2010