Where the Sugar Dollars

Where the sugar dollars
have not yet reached is

not far: look no farther
than the cane fields,

where a boy wields
a machete half his size.

What is the size of
injustice? Can it be

sliced in half, then that
half slashed? Where does

all that sugar go? Why
do we call it sweet?

Andrea Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Glimmer TrainThe Hudson Review, etc.  Her poetry collections include Furs Not Mine (Four Way Books 2015), Kentucky Derby (Salmon Poetry 2011), Long Division (Salmon Poetry 2009), and The Cartographer’s Vacation (Owl Creek Press 1999). She has received a PEN Discovery Award, Glimmer Train’s Short Fiction Award, and several fellowships at The MacDowell Colony.