4

by Noelle Kocot

Overview

Images of youthful rebellion, cultural disgust, hyperreal love and visceral superworldly elements abound in this passionate, controlled debut from the New York-based Kocot. Eschewing the pastiche and irony of more elliptical versifiers, Kocot casts her speaker as the renegade, even the vagabond, but with benign intentions peeking through the defiant absurdities: "Your brand of peace disgusts me, do you hear?/ I am the fugitive who drives the stampede/ Of aardvarks across your lawns./ I have come to tip your cows." Free-verse, sestinas, rhyming quatrains and other verse forms are matched throughout by a knotty, provocative turn of mind part Rimbaudian, part Kenneth Koch that mixes darker, often biblical imagery with the above quirky wit. Swift, intense, image-laden poems like "Ontology Train" are, indeed, like modern versions of "The Drunken Boat," but Kocot's poems are usually about relationships, about the heavy burden of love and poetic thought that she shares with her interlocutor, a nameless, mystical "you": "Yet you are concrete/ Somehow; I know, I've heard your bee-like buzzing/ In all the tiny leaves bursting from their sacs to greet / A magical universe..." The sestinas offer a somewhat lighter view, partly because the necessary play of the form, but also because of Kocot's deft zingers: "San Francisco/ Fantasy aside, you have to admit we sucked/ As a couple...." Like Jennifer Moxley and Chris Stoffolino, Kocot has found a language for her emotions that pulls an abundance of memories, post-punk urban metaphors and manic verbal twists into her simultaneously cerebral and energizing universe, "with an atmospheric clarity emblematic/ Of the essential questions blowing here and there/ Like remnants of a foreign language." 

—Cahners Business Information, Inc., 2001

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781884800320
Publisher:	Four Way Books
Publication date:	04/01/2001
Series:	Levis Poetry Prize Series
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Noelle Kocot is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Phantom Pains of Madness (Wave Books, May 2016), Soul in Space (Wave Books, 2013), The Bigger World (Wave Books, 2011), and a book of translations of some of the poems of Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default (Wave Books, 2011). Her previous works include the discography Damon's Room, (Wave Books Pamphlet Series, 2010), Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books, 2009) and Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books, 2006). She is also the author of 4 and The Raving Fortune (both from Four Way Books). Her poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry in 2001, 2012, and 2013. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, The Fund for Poetry, the American Poetry Review, and a residency fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. She is the current Poet Laureate of Pemberton Borough, New Jersey.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

    Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?
                                 —Elizabeth Bishop

A paper hat transmutes so easily into a paper boat,
But this doesn't mean that the boat is somehow inferior.
I was a child once.
I saw into the deep, blue interior

Of the number four, which is the Holy Spirit who makes
All things possible and all things matter.
All things I thought of then,
Even the letter

Q without the U behind it. And things just settled.
There was no need to hope
For any more, except maybe a cigarette, and the thing about cigarettes
Is that one after another, they're the same. Meanwhile, soap

Dissolves much more quickly than it did in 1970,
The year that embarrasses me most with its promise of tall,
Musky, balding Gordons and Dons, with orange, palm-tree expressions,
And women in short, pregnant dresses and ash-black falls.

It will take a freighter
Of Coppertone to tan them all. Somewhere a library still swells with bean-
Bag chairs and barefoot, dozing hippies too hooked
On Marx and Keynes to notice that Miss Breen

Has in fact been able to write her roommate (friend, I presume)
Into her will withlittle fuss from the family. Anyway, I hope I've seen
The last of those backwards
Fools, except of course for kind-eyed Miss Breen

And her companion, who are coming
This Thursday for a good, strong cup of German tea. Hopefully, that rag
Of a newspaper will give us something to talk about before
We sip. Wait a minute! I must buy some Black Flag

So that the roaches spare our Lorna Doones! 0 world,
In all my years of comprehension
I will never understand their synchronous, immediate
Flocking in bright formation, then halting suspension

Beneath the sink when I turn on the fluorescent, kitchen, warehouse-
Like, blaring light just before sun-up. The blue
Spirit that I once saw radiating out from everything, like a tourist
In a too-young country, has gone home. And yes, I love you,

Yes, if to love implies more guilt than one alone can harbor.
So come, the scenery
Is fine here. The wild blue light still crosses the mountains
Now and then, somewhere a number four sprouts through the rough greenery.

    Love Poem on the Anniversary of Nowhere

The ground is failing in my memory.
This shade is deafening. A false story
Welds me to a space where I neither
Wash my hair, nor fold my clothes,

Nor speak, nor even breathe, and I ask myself,
What favor can you do for me
That you have not already done? For instance,
When I wrote my name in the datebooks of angels

And I did not care whether they were fallen,
You didn't say a word.
But I heard your crystal clanging
From afar and I knew you'd finally come

To doubt the bodiless fire of marvelous dark
Fading softly into nearest stars above us. You wept.
The leaves fell one, two, three, infinity,
And you, my stalled train bound for eternity,

Remain sunk into the burning snow that caps the evil
River pumping my heart across the empty edge of space,
Where an intermezzo sleep of shadows writhes
Lightly on the throbbing, failing ground.

    Sappho to Erinna

Come. It's morning.
Let me brush the stars
From your hair.

    An Ordinary Evening

There I go again shoving my wheelbarrow
Of pain across the filthy streets
Of the dimly-lit city. No one stops me,
No one says anything like, "Here let me,"

Or "Jeez, what a wonderful thing
You have there, do you know where
I can get a thing like that?"
Instead we trundle along,

My wheelbarrow and I, dodging
The strollers and shimmering cars
Which look beautiful under the orange
Streetlamps, and everyone seems as blessed

As a holy star, and I forget
My wheelbarrow for a moment,
As one might forget a warning
In a dream, and in my mind, I gather

Various items: A net crammed with the scales
Of invisible fish, the wind that passes,
Singing, and all of my widowed beliefs
Lost in a language full of storms,

And I remember just what makes my garlands
Of solitude sway like the sea
In front of a lighthouse.
Then, in the crisp rottedness

That lines the question marks of steam
Coiling out of the potholes
Which I manage to avoid for the most part,
I ponder my wheelbarrow, and all

Of its inner-meaning, which is far sweeter
When trembling on the lips of a stranger
At the end of a thin day
That sheds its shadows like a dress,

And tosses them into the flames of sunset
Blazing up from the gasoline
Shrouding the asphalt, setting
The whole sidereal sidewalk of trees on fire,

And while the others have already fled,
You and I remain caught
In this conflagration, yet I can say nothing
And only observe the melting scene

Flashing across your beatific eyes,
And it is there, only there
That I can finally bring myself to say,

"Yes, I think I would like some help
With this. Here you go."

    Last Words

As the moving vehicle approaches,
Your eyelashes tap out in code
How we once tossed in the shadows
Of our worried days, unbeguiled

By the windswept motions
Of nimble flowers (hell,
What did they know of somnambulism
Or love?) and how we sighed

While the sun warmed our hair
And everything faded to an astonished,
Steady humming. We ate metaphorical
Tranquilizers by the dozen,

By the gazillion, in that time
When you and I wrestled across
The page of a younger poem,
Our restlessness blossoming

Like yellow sponge from underneath
Certain upholstery. And fate followed us,
Yes, but not like a madman brandishing
A razor, more like a bureaucrat

Who manages to turn everything
Dreary into a useful skill.
The sunrises clambered on,
Each one more tiresome than the last,

Their unnaturalness akin to the sheen
Rippling across a sheet of imitation suede.
And the river of life slogged on
Beneath us, bracketed by its narrow banks.

As the moving vehicle approaches,
I am astounded that I have time to consider
Such things, that such things
Reveal themselves to me at all,

Seeing as how they are not the things
We thought we held most dear,
And it is as if they stand as signposts
That mark how futile it was for us

To detour each of the sharp-edged scraps
Strewn across road after level road,
And how in the end it steered us head on

Into a suffocating angel choking on a wishbone
Behind the wheel of a runaway truck.

    Bad Aliens

They're really here, spreading their ideas
Like vulture droppings, conniving to sow
Their brazen ontologies like bone-encrusted wheat
Along our field of vision yellowed like an almanac,

Stringing our thoughts into a syzygy,
Until we cannot move them and feel instinctively
That we never will. The few, the very few,
Who escape become spokespeople for our cause,

And although their identifies remain unknown
To even them, surely they will turn a phrase
Or two that will make the bastards think again
Before they steal our fluids in the night,

Suck the breath from our livestock, tearing
Off their very flesh, leaving a metallic aroma
In the air as if from singed, mineral-soaked hair.
The world is becoming a giant crematorium

Before our eyes. Next thing you know,
It'll be your big toe shot up with morphine
At your family reunion,
It'll be your child slurping blood

At First Communion, it'll be a havoc
Of suburban cannibalism bursting into flames
At the mere suggestion of an accident.
Meanwhile, the flowers hang like open mouths

As we walk around relishing
Our wisdom of refracted light.
The neighbors lounge outside the warehouse playing cards
While inside the aliens are at it again,

Warning the boy strapped to the steel table
As in a dream that he will find his end
In a myriad of abandoned mines.
And no one will come to look for him,

And no one will even think to, because by then
All will have been erased, by then we will have forgotten
Him as we have forgotten
The name of the druggist's Seeing Eye dog.

And we'll go on with our house-painting,
And we'll go on with our affairs
Of negligence, and we'll go about with our heroics
Of tin foil, and all the while the aliens

Will be waiting for the perfect hour
To land on the non-referential velvet of our lawns,
Bending each blade of grass perfectly
To match the charred feathers of the baby chicks

Still lining the barn walls from two Easters ago
Where they probed our insides brilliantly
For signs of redemption and were satisfied.
The aliens are here,

Permanently confirmed to walk among us
And because they're here already,
There will be no possession, no redeemer
Yet to come. Instead, a triangle in the sky

Reflects the sober landscape, a reminder
That angles are the highest fate of form
Like the beaten metal of shell-cases stabbing
The corners of the pulpy world.

The imprints of their ships
Reveal a plastic sincerity, as if all along
They were only here to help, as if stealing
Our children, their faces plastered

Permanently onto milk cartons were an intergalactic feat
Worthy of a stellar bow. We know they hold
The inevitable ace, we know they wear
The hereditary apparel of extinct, misty grasses

Overgrowing the sepulchral cloth
Of the earth. We stand frozen before their badness,
We are a smoky restaurant full of soldiers
That can fly off the globe at any moment,

Leaving their beams to bisect our newest footprints
With the mockery of some season's malingering death.
The three-sided pyramid of the occipital
Can deflect only so much into geometry

Of our collective breath. I would gouge
Out the insides of this sleep so big,
I would start my own crusade if I thought I had a chance,
But they're bad, they're bad for real.

And in the word Bad, bordered by flashing air,
I see the wheat spin a numeral's fiery dance,
And this leaves me with two questions:

—Why all this irony?
—Are you enjoying the view?

    The Traffic Cop

As always, I expected too much
From the siren's hexed scream,
And what it flies in the face of is lamentable,
Like baby birds in winter scrunched

Inside their fist-sized nests.
Today I made myself a list:
Hack a path through the winding river
Just outside of town,

Tend to a widow's irradiated garden,
Remember to love, oh, remember ...
Enough. As usual, I'm reduced to giving
Hand signals, short of breath

Like a sword coughing through the air
In a single person's joust.
I don't know how to say what I'm becoming,
But it seems that every time

I consider lolling on the banks of the lake
Of infernal fire, the ice-cream truck
Toddles along, hauling its song,
The only music I can bring

Myself to listen to these days.
The truth is, I'm bored,
And conversations about why don't seem to help.
I'm getting older fast and none too carefully,

And my vocation has shown itself
To be the same as any obsession
And what it has to do with.
The more I think out loud or try to break

With the striations of the night
That go by like a fluid through a monumental crate,
The more I sense the waffling
Of a dismal perfection parceling itself out

Like a morning that peels itself in strips
From eyes like the hazy skin of grapes.
The truth is, there are no rules here,
No signs buried in the anaphoric sunrises

Pouring down as slow as the colloidal
Substance of your lives,
No direction to the rains swaying in the summer wind
Like abandoned clotheslines of another time.

Your brand of peace disgusts me, do you hear?
I am the fugitive who drives a stampede
Of aardvarks across your lawns.
I have come to tip your cows.

I have eaten of all your trees
And still you do not know.

    Why I Wish I Had Never Taken a Poetry Workshop

The ruined insistence of words inscribed
In the flakes of rusted sun before my eyes
Hang in time and dangle like hungry infants
From a caryatid's lustrous arms. There is no more

Hope for them than for the strange
And subtle whistling that one hears outside
One's window late into the night and finally
Turns to see the whistler who disappears,

And takes the whistling, too, as if on cue.
Nevertheless, the features of the whistler progress
In unremembered dreams which diminish by half-lives.
If I had only stood still,

Waited in the slow strangulation of schoolmarm
Voices for the original word to sink,
A watery diamond through a river of felled trees,
To sink itself into the drowned aviary

Of my brain, perhaps I would not have propped myself
So readily upon the lamp-lit discourse pillowing my head
Into too much sleep. But alas, as is my habit,
I sped past them like an ostrich, with wax wings

To make it worse, stumbling and sputtering
Past the fleeting friction of seasons
Until I melted and deformed into a warped
Staircase wending its way up toward a fixed idea

That hung in vials of holy water from the necks
Of the Eumenides masquerading as a cloud.
If I could crumple all these thoughts
Into tiny balls of lead or leaves,

I would not be concerned at all with finding
Those fine balances ringed round with shame
Or pride, like an egg reduced to cracking
Because it cannot sustain itself even in the gentlest

Hand's stormy vise. But as I can fit
My thoughts into a coffee cup,
What else can I do but use this lassitude
As a mockery of the clear path's reflection

That enjoins me to forever walk on sunny streams?
Ever since I was a failed child, I've known
How reveries can be shattered into symbols
That I will never call by name,

How each man or woman can be worn
Like a holster by another man or woman's side.
I did not need to be reminded once again,
Did not need to hear,

"There's too much glittering starlight here
To see the glittering starlight."
I was already blind to diamonds, and to stars,
And the emptiness there was just exquisite

To my touch: Only the Braille embossed across the fire
That lit the coals beneath an ancient kettle whistling,
Keening like an infant through a night so songless,
And yet the embers danced.

    Words and Things

The tiny acrobat
Of joy

Leaps the distances
We do not speak,

As if our tongues
Were as mangled

As the first cries
Of a newborn

Pouring into the sickle-
Grin of moon,

And hovers over
The net

Of the already-
Said and laughs

And laughs
Into that silence

While sun sinks
And we lie

Hammocked
And waiting

For tranquilized
Sleep

Nudging at one
Another and mumbling

About nothing
In particular.

Table of Contents

I
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait	5
Love Poem on the Anniversary of Nowhere	7
Sappho to Erinna	8
An Ordinary Evening	9
Last Words	11
Bad Aliens	13
The Traffic Cop	16
Why I Wish I Had Never Taken a Poetry Workshop	18
Words and Things	20
Ontology Train	22
Outing	24
Tribute	25
II
Signs of Life	29
Bicycle Poem	31
Dasein	32
Nostalgia	34
I Want Something of Yours for Comfort When I Sleep	36
The End of November	37
Conversation at 5 O'Clock	39
Brooklyn Sestina: June, 1975	40
Bisexuality	42
Abortion Elegy	43
Reconciliation	44
For My Fatherthe Poet	45
Aunt Lee Dying, Surrounded by Family	46
The Number 4 Comforts a Sad Child	47
Sestina for Lizzette	48
III
Le Marteau sans maitre	53
What I Want to Tell You but Can't	55
Having a Job	56
In Spring	58
Autobiography	59
Blood Brother	60
Repeat After Me	61
A Losing War	63
Hindsight Is Always Best	64
The Passion According to G.H	65
What I Mean When I Say I'm a Poet	66
While Writing	68
The Laugh of the Medusa	69

Editorial Reviews

Images of youthful rebellion, cultural disgust, hyperreal love and visceral superworldly elements abound in this passionate, controlled debut from the New York-based Kocot. Eschewing the pastiche and irony of more elliptical versifiers, Kocot casts her speaker as the renegade, even the vagabond, but with benign intentions peeking through the defiant absurdities: "Your brand of peace disgusts me, do you hear?/ I am the fugitive who drives the stampede/ Of aardvarks across your lawns./ I have come to tip your cows." Free-verse, sestinas, rhyming quatrains and other verse forms are matched throughout by a knotty, provocative turn of mind part Rimbaudian, part Kenneth Koch that mixes darker, often biblical imagery with the above quirky wit. Swift, intense, image-laden poems like "Ontology Train" are, indeed, like modern versions of "The Drunken Boat," but Kocot's poems are usually about relationships, about the heavy burden of love and poetic thought that she shares with her interlocutor, a nameless, mystical "you": "Yet you are concrete/ Somehow; I know, I've heard your bee-like buzzing/ In all the tiny leaves bursting from their sacs to greet / A magical universe..." The sestinas offer a somewhat lighter view, partly because the necessary play of the form, but also because of Kocot's deft zingers: "San Francisco/ Fantasy aside, you have to admit we sucked/ As a couple...." Like Jennifer Moxley and Chris Stoffolino, Kocot has found a language for her emotions that pulls an abundance of memories, post-punk urban metaphors and manic verbal twists into her simultaneously cerebral and energizing universe, "with an atmospheric clarity emblematic/ Of the essential questions blowing here and there/ Like remnants of a foreign language." (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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