K.A. Coldwell was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy when he was eighteen months old.  Told that he wouldn’t live past the age of four, he has defied all prognoses and is nearing his second decade of life.  Utilizing a power wheelchair to navigate the halls of academia, K. A. Coldwell writes poetry, short stories, is currently working on his first novel, and aspires to become a music journalist.

Sifting through my friend's vinyl collection and drinking his booze while he's out.

(November 20, 2009. Issue 11.)

The cover
of the first album
by Roxy Music
has this woman,

middle aged,

swimming in a pool
of silky furbelow,

with her shoulders
poking forward,

making her neck look
grotesque;

her legs stretch
to the back of the album

and she snarls which
ten years ago
probably
grew entire gardens
of them,

but now she just
looks like
she swallowed a fly;

and she's covered
in lipstick
and rouge
and eye shadow
and penciled
in eyebrows
and eye liner
and old,

sad,

eyes,

so that,

sitting here
in the kitchen,

the first shot
of Gray Goose
hitting me,

I stare at her
leathery chest
instead,

thinking
of what grandpa
always told me:

"Dead fish
go with the flow."