NOELLE KOCOT


The Poem

And so we see it, here, now,
​In the unassuming day, straggling
​Along in the shade.  To say,
​I have watched the sun set,

​Is to say, my conscience is a chain
​To which I have the key.
​The colonies of weeds dappling
​The million bright leaves

​Leaves me puzzled, long-drawn,
​With enough earth in my hands
​To scatter across the sky.
​The stars laze about in the gravely

​​Heavens.  Its blackness is alive.
​Soon we watch the sun rise again,
​But until then, we lie in an overturned
​Boat, the ark of modernity, the poem. 


The Process

Give me something I can use:
​A pick axe, a shovel, some salt.
​Here in the graineries, everyone
​Is tired, so we cut some thick
​Bread into thirds.  There is no
​Historical explanation for what
​We did.  Casey got an erection.
​Marfa tried to save someone
​From war.  We figured if we planted
​A lump of clay in the ground,
​It would grow human, but it
​Didn't.  Our neighbors laughed,
​Our neighbors cried, we fed
​Them oats in the blazing summer
​Sun.  Suddenly, we remembered
​That we were scared, too scared
​To do anything about much.
​So we dropped off to sleep,
​Dreaming of crazy things, yelping
​In our sleep.  When we awoke,
​There was a piece of paper on
​The ground with the words,
Pick axe, shovel, salt, and we
​Prayed over it like the hooligans
​That we were.  No amount of
​Fasting would save us, no amount
​Of evil delight.  So we walked off
​Separately, each to our fates,
​While the heavens tried to rectify
​What had been ours all along.
​Give us something we can use:
​Hypnotherapy, acupuncture, a
​Rite of passage that would take
​Us somewhere far away and cool.


The Blue

How often we say things we don't mean
​Fully, with our full selves.  But this is
​All right, since we cannot make sense of
​The growing weeds, the things that go
​Where only blue travels.  A hymn rings
​Out.  The wavery wind blows.  I don't
​Want to sound coy or even ridiculous,
​But after all, the azure of a face drawn
​In sand at the edge of a sea is my own
​Two deaths.  The first one happened 7
​Years ago.  I've grown all new cells since
​Then.  The next will happen at some point,
​But I'm not worried, not hardly.  Is this a
​Message?  A message to whom?  Is it
​To you, who polishes me like a pearl?
​Humanity is more than that, I think, and
​Now the light has spoken.  It's time
​To carry the weight of the day, and wait
​For sleep to come again, as it does,
​Flat and ridiculous over the whole blue land.  


Formalism on a Sunday Afternoon

                                for Anthony McCann

The wolf howled at the flock, linguistics
Didn't matter.  I spout tubes today from
My head, the trees, leaves, all over the place.
Another blue valley in a starboard eye-socket,

A paper touch of something else.  Cities and
Shrubs are another man's loneliness.  Detritus
Mixed with a day's signal flare, the happenstance
Of rising, rumor of promise, suppleness of words.

You will seize us with your power, I say, to
A turnstile that flames all night.  Past the wick
That curls into sleep, past the body's liturgy,
I stay in a state of melting and ablation,

Autumn stripped of its content like a pigment,
Summer that ends with a star rising somewhere


Bonehouse

These legs of mine, this bonehouse.
​A bed sheet is halted and folded,
​Summer ash on my hands.  The crimped
​Light slowly unravels.  The flame

​Is entrenched in the lavish seed.
​Forgetting and forgetting, meaning
​Is sailing with length.  The thrill of
​The river blinks once.  Pinned down

​By the salubrious air, pinned down
​By the salubrious air, a hollow corpse
​Loses its rhythm.  Can you tell me
​Where I'm going from here?  The light

​Is now clasped to keep things true.
​The lucid leaves circle about a hole.


BIO

NOELLE KOCOT is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, Soul in Space (Wave Books, October, 2013).  She also translated some of the poems of Tristan Corbiere from the French in a book called, Poet by Default (Wave, 2011).  She has received numerous awards for her work, including those from The Lannan Literary Foundation, The American Poetry Review, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Academy of American Poets and The Fund for Poetry.  Her work has also been widely anthologized, including in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry and Best American Poetry 2001, 2012 and 2013.  She lives in New Jersey, and teaches writing in New York City.