SurVision Magazine

The Exorcism


A prolonged nap, then a silence. It still
Perches on my brain, how the body grew
Inflamed. The languors of eternity, this
Roadside cocoon, the exotic personhood

Of one so greatly afflicted. Airbrushed
Consciousness, the demons possessed us,
And we overcompensated with kindness.
If we could deconstruct chance, the fullsome

Moon would obfuscate these children,
All happy in the waters. How did it happen?
We got too close to a fire. Our dream pillows
Did no good. A plenitude of imaginings,

What "opens you up"? Numbers freed from
Their clock tick around irreversibly.





Narcissism


Blankets out of focus, see how nicely
You are playing with the other kids!
Lifting a hammer, the hapless weather
Rings. The end has run its course again

And again. The ribboned mind, it takes
Me longer to tell you this than I want to.
Something is moving. I think you understand.
The flotsam strewn under this compromised

Heaven, the tamping down of a widow's soil,
A delicate skin around these black lines. Put
It all in a box and send it away. You'll be
Glad you did, and the storm that is forming

Itself out of ashes bears the scent of charcoal. To
Hobble out of a singular verb, that is called life!





God's Green Earth


My kinsfolk, I am sorry for my pride.
Are any of us exempt from a bumpy
Road? The memory of each moment,
The greenness of phosphorescent cities,

How they lick the wind. With large round
Eyes I look at the world – look at us all
Dreaming Like that! Then, a million
Chambers with all of us stuffed in, how

Do we ever foreclose on a menace?
Look at a schoolhouse the color of mud.
See how it tricks itself of its students,
And see what we call a rainbow that

Enwraps all of us in a gigantic circle.
See that blade of grass sprouting up
From a verb, the only one we have
Ever needed, and it is rightly called to love.





Noelle Kocot is from Brooklyn, New York, and currently resides in New Jersey.
She is has published 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 from the poems by Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default
(Wave Books, 2011).  Noelle Kocot teaches at The New School and lives in New Jersey.
She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of
American Poets, The Fund for Poetry and the American Poetry Review. She is the current
Poet Laureate of Pemberton Borough, New Jersey.