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! -
...