Ann Cotten
Ann Cotten Poems
All swans are called Reinhard. Not really, I know
they just look like it. Like a certain look. And so
- - - - - - beep - - - crumbs and they are merely
what they might think (no no no). They wear glasses
...
They are not there for anyone to live on
and really, they can only do things wrong.
They swallow hooks with little pain
but monofilaments get them first.
...
Trade will always be the same, but you can always leave.
Hercules & Atlas
Bleed the Lily gently, palpitate the Thorny Rose,
The Tulip dreams, the sturdy one, upon her sweetened rows.
...
A terrible claw has hit me
it lives in the picture carpet
don't ask me I don't know
what it is but it is
...
Leap through the Styx, a quicksilver
curtain, an advance, a breakfast.
You close your eyes and pierce the surface of the water.
Now you are in another world. Like words,
...
Late clamours in and we spit on the fence, where
Mister Leach is banging Cary Grant, bunching their evening dresses
and a bird keeps saying 'Hobts ka Wohnung?'
...
Beds, lend me your ears! I did consider writing this in verse. For a while it seeded a good idea to me. Which disintegrated, of course (my opinion).
...
They're sputtering like motors with no clue,
the oil wants to get out and spits
words only to lose them
like dead good mousers.
...
The Oil must leak.
The tongue must toil.
Man must use
both tongue and oil.
...
The crop of this expanse is stubble, no, how do
you say, loops, simulation of fat land. Diplomats
walk on them and so do we. Every loop
rears its head once - ah fleeting youth! -
...
When I learned how you put my little half-sister to bed
and how in good moments I converse with my lover, I realized:
Did you talk with me in my early years
...
Rise up, swell illusions, cutoff cables,
tragic flowers, uneven equals. Oh you kiss,
you smouldering blooming kiss of bad
craftsmanship, and oh you human eyes.
...
The one in the corner / the woofs and the breezes / the noses / the goading / the needs and the freezes / the iconoclastics / the jeopards / the beatniks /
...
The palindrome is not palingenesis:
The latter would be more an anagram.
In search of erudite convivial theses
it has been done with rocks, nations, spam.
...
Take me. Take me well. And not enough,
withal, take others. Take my soul
and beat it soft upon a window pane,
that it might kool my face. It comes
...
I have bad feet
I practice verse
unmissed am I
where strange lands were
...
Pots!
At eye level - Shards!
All these dippers and ideals,
imagination healers, bigwigs of the world,
dried, ground, decorated protection,
...
Love, love will tear us apart
Ein deutscher Geist tritt an den Start
the devil never fails his mark
I am a man and you are a heart
...
Go and kick a falling star
make a feeling throw him far
kick him to the edge of green
where the follies can be seen
...
When the oscillator hums, I'll hold your hand
When they come to get you, I'll pull you aside
When the engine purrs, I'll find the right words
When the music stops, your lips may have to part
...
Ann Cotten Biography
Ann Cotten is a poet, prose author, and translator. She was born in Iowa in 1982 and moved to Vienna in 1987. She studied Germanistics at the University of Vienna and has been living in Berlin since 2006. Since 2000, her poetry, prose, essays and illustrations have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Die Rampe, Kolik, Zwischen den Zeilen, and Schreibheft. Her first collection of poetry, Fremdwörterbuchsonette (Suhrkamp), came out in 2007. She also published a book on concrete poetry entitled Nach der Welt: Die Listen der Konkreten Poesie und ihre Folgen (Klever Verlag) in 2008; a collection of poetry called Florida-Räume (Suhrkamp) in 2010; and her first full length book of work in English, I, Coleoptile, (Broken Dimanche Press) in collaboration with the artist Kerstin Cmelka came out in 2010.
The Best Poem Of Ann Cotten
lets see if we can get clear about the swans
All swans are called Reinhard. Not really, I know
they just look like it. Like a certain look. And so
- - - - - - beep - - - crumbs and they are merely
what they might think (no no no). They wear glasses
what no, organic brackets. Light rackets,
right? Round necks and pecking as black as
shots and each, each of them might think
me? Like this? Then come around, to
pluster and guide with crumbs your, that
- these, yes? - dole us out to know, on necks
so ready to be torn down, so raffled, so so questioning,
to tell me, like anyone, 'oh', no, 'show'.
They come and are more than what
you can deal with, about - not cr- - - -
about swan things is what they think about.
And you see them floating, in the midst
of a strong rain, scattered over the water
and I don't really know, wait for half
a cigarette's length. Crumbs, crumbs, crumbs.
Then we proceed. The tire exploded,
the bike must be pushed all the way to the doorway.
What do they want, the length of the canal as they come?
To listen to music quietly, to be (me)
alone and see the swans
through a film, as though through a film;
to watch them without having to think
that all swans' names are Reinhard, or Charlotte.
Ann Cotten Comments
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10/30/2026 8:49:26 AM # rel_20261026T125300Z_a7741e1
