Noelle Kocot is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books, 2006),
Sunny Wednesday (Wave, 2009) and The Bigger World (Wave, 2011). She is also the author of a discography, Damon's Room (Wave, 2010). She has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including those from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review and The Fund for Poetry. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she now lives in New Jersey and teaches writing in New York City. The October first launch date of this issue coincides with the release of Kocot’s translations of the French poet, Tristan Corbiere, entitled Poet by Default (Wave Books). YouTube links to several of those translations can be found here, here, and here.
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On the Death of Bagley Wright
for Charlie
The shooting stars over the village meadows,
Our postures in the moonlight, the artist paints
His self-portrait with dirt and water. The alacrity
Of my own blood, the longing for rain, everything
That will hurt me today. My translation of the fields
Becomes grass, three feet of grass in the isolate
Heat. The question is nearly a century. The question
Is, will our children, and our children's children,
Fly into a sun that does not dream. The wind is giving
Its mouth away, and we are all so cheery in the van.
Our spreading hands after we've been banished from
The hotel, gathering ourselves in our arms, is a plot
To evolve. Surrounded by guests, the kitchen is immaculate.
There are footprints of angels, empty robins, in the snow.
The Television
The noble one lives in a windmill, and
The nightingale sings with blood clots.
Oh how I love fish, I love how a whole
Town lies to a child! To open a fiction
Requires a bright parting. See my small
Body with claw marks on it. The rain comes
Down like a drill. Ceiling touching ceiling,
Before dawn I give the animal a chance.
Behold, I am a tragic figure, going happily
Along my way, and the icons for something
More juicy have simply dissolved. What
Is this feeling, a scrambled glue, dried and
Exploding into smithereens? We talk of
Revolution. The television is only a poem.
Heavy and Certain
Blossoming air, the complete repeatability
Of change. A vowel floats the marrow,
No summer here. This being next to one,
The sun singing to the tree. The world is
Full of water. There is no choice sometimes
But to drink of it. The hero is on the premises.
Wound of day, the tangles of green wire,
I call it redundant, and everybody's love budget
Is spent. Treat yourself to some roots, take your
Hands from your head. My sleeves are like
Thick ropes. The earth's crust opens like a flower.
You crawl across a garden of warmth and fire.
Yellow is survived by our limbs. Touch me—
As though we have been illuminated, woolen.
Because You Do
Ignorant silence under the brass light,
Time is exceedingly brittle where you are.
I won't speak anything against you,
But that doesn't make it right. Time
Rocks and rocks. The rustling of the fishes,
The rubber glide underneath,
The tightness of your backbone against
The summer sky. You go to light
The fire. The sum of consistency suspends
In midair. You have erased one too many
Slices of the vulgar in favor of the origin.
An unclothed hymn wafts through your
Kitchen window. It tells you how to be
Somewhere all at once, a hand of the wind.
Now Gone
This longing that I feel along this thick
And stolid road, the pomp of late summer
Grass, we all agree, hearing this, that I
Have set my rules upon my wildest dreams.
The young woman with the regimented
Set of dread and dark has a sense of humor,
And she says that even the moon has cancer.
The way flesh and blood border the imagination,
The way they pulled a coat out of a fire,
The oblivion at arm's length is hovering,
The junctures of emotion live in a small house.
I lay on my side, and the clatter
Of brain cells going out keeps me awake.
I hear the storm is coming, but from elsewhere.