2 poems
the last gods
we were joy junkies riding coal waste on old mining roads
the white birch divining subtle vibrations of earth
railroad tracks ribboning orange the sinking sun
what prone light enters un-feathered
what larva what salt what white can unmake
spine cloud tripe pity
she was in love with the guy who was in love
with her best friend he was white-blonde long
she was white-freckled sweet
we lived to be night but alive
no stars shined brighter than our bodies
outlined by fire licks
there were two white girls and one black girl walking
the neighborhood of another black girl the neighborhood
girl tells the new black girl walk in front not in back
what enters unformed horizons break
not continuums though you refuse
to imagine an end
a cloaking theory whitens sky when i
finally arrive at my inner
constitution
it takes me too long to learn that pretty is a white
myth that ends in death death is a field
white with trees if we could we see them
they are running with masks
they are running without masks
the street is bound in movement
the sirens become a direction
the light is white in the background
the light near white almost
the sheet is white over his face
a white shard seeds me
i have two knives instead of a heart
white boils down to rum when it begins as sugar
the ruins pock the island at the beginning
and end of our romance
white wears heels looks
over her shoulder
white knows what she’s done
i’ve been gone a long time
each day is a room
the landscape only water and hills
if you widen your focus we become a map
you can’t distinguish your water from my water
your hills from my hills
when i refuse to love the island
the sea turtles come they bury their eggs so deep
only mongoose can find them
we were going to change the world
we couldn't press charges
he was obviously unarmed
she does not pull over
the dead boy is everything for everyone
everything means captive after all
clarity is not white
i write this down and think i’m happy
wanting white to be a lie
it rains both inside and out the world is genius
and smoke i'm sitting here because of nothing
you did please don’t call me lovely
if you hunt
there is white beyond the canopy of leaves
if you’re prey
there is red within the canopy of trees
regardless
there is light of some dark doing
a white boy calls a landscape my hip
he marbles me exotic
he watches the way
i write his name like mine
beyond something of shadows
a vase with roses holds the skull of a woman
loved by every hand that touched her
don’t confuse a trumpet flower
for yellow sentiment
pollination is a thug fight
what heart thump legions these still stars
what molten revolt adorns the claw
what prone light enters un-feathered now
god of wanting to know where to be
today a politician told a press conference
the world is a gangster and because it seemed apparent
that he found poetry in the savagery of his job
i felt happier when i walked away from the broadcast
the hope i held onto made me feel new
in the way it dismissed everything i’ve learned to be true
it’s sunday and i’m not calling my father yet to interrupt
his day of waiting without my mother again or
to intercede with the reminder my voice brings
she is the greatest thing we have in common
and the greatest thing we no longer have between us
on sundays someone goes to home depot
gets lumber brings it home all one needs to do is take it
out back someone else may come give next steps it will be
only so long before somebody decides it was a good job
or a bad job it’s always something the outcome
my sister’s not working this summer the school busses
driven across valley roads are driven without her driving them
not working is a thing she says every day in a way that makes it
so directly related to working that they are in some ways essentially
the very same thing working and not working driving and not driving
my sister is a poor white loop of active negation in the face of being
i cannot remember why i was upset with annie lamott and gave
all her books away i remember feeling that when she repeated
profoundly
the words of a dying friend
i would remember them forever
though i’ve forgotten
but also
a certain thievery was at hand
i’ve learned all words are forgiveness as in
to forgive someone for something you cannot remember
is more simple like just loving someone enough
i post an article about whales and sea turtles
caught in fishing nets off the west coast
their abandoned protections
mean there will be no caps enforced
no fisheries shut down
no sanctions
no dissuasions and so the whales and the sea turtles
suffer the sum consequence
flat ontology of kelp
i imagine within new ontologies equitable objects
become the trampled currency of value —
valued objects and unvalued
objects
the reassignment of the turtle
as a value-object
i imagine can only happen via
the sound of sobbing coming
from every window in the world
at once
on the fourth of july a white woman
called the police on a black man wearing socks in the pool
two weeks after a white woman called
the cops on a black girl selling water
a month after a white woman called
the cops on a family in a park 2 weeks after
a white woman called the cops on a college
student in her own dorm sometime around the same
time as a black woman called the cops on a man
who would not let her enter her own gated community
where she lived as a doctor and
he didn’t live at all
then in a determined turn of circumstances
someone dies again
flashing lights
flicker in the path of the soul as it rises
finally a crescendo
then the world collapses
here’s where a smooth poet would say something funny
and demeaning about her height or weight or self-esteem
or her relationship with her mother or sex
and perhaps there might be a moment also where she describes
her own reflection in a way that makes you laugh
at her awkward but snapdragon posture
when i was 20 i sat on a lawn in green bay
and cried because i could not save the world that night
i fell short of my fundraising quota
4 hours door to doubtful door
collecting $12 checks to clean up
toxic waste
i could not tell the difference between
having cancer and being black but either way
a clipboard said something about something
i still looked forward to a world at peace
some hate hadn’t yet begun there are so
many worlds we’d rather not have been part of
which is a privilege of being to say what not after the fact
i knew nothing about the station at othello park except
a beautiful poet posted a photo which should have been
all about lines but seemed all about curves space and light
i felt moved to a longing that made me feel
at once an orphan but also someone who abandoned the world
the photo gave my feeling a look
gave it a roof a large window hint of shadow
light in this image had no consequence
except as a vehicle of exposure
in another universe
i was born and lived and died
the beautiful poet’s photo in this life
reconciles
the absence of myself despite myself
with myself
without anyone further
the same
Ruth Ellen Kocher is the author of godhouse, (forthcoming Omnidawn 2023), Third Voice (Tupelo Press 2016), Ending in Planes (Noemi Press, 2014); Goodbye Lyric: The Gigans and Lovely Gun (Sheep Meadow Press, 2014); domina Un/blued (Tupelo Press, 2013), winner of the Dorset Prize and the 2014 PEN/Open Book Award; One Girl Babylon (New Issues Press, 2003); When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering (New Issues Press, 2002) and Desdemona’s Fire (Lotus Press, 1999). She teaches poetry, poetics, and literature at the University of Colorado-Boulder.