Advice

 

I’m looking at your heart not staring at your breasts

 

I’m looking at your heart
not staring at your breasts

Long ago I built a wall 
of smooth boulders
without mortar
on a hillside 
daring gravity
to find flaws

Moss and lichen 
made home on stone 
while seed settled
into niche

Roots tumble rocks 
with their quiet strength 
like the power 
of milk

Grandchildren scramble
from your chest
and we laugh 

…..

First published in Rat’s Ass Review 
Thank you editor Roderick Bates. 

Photo by Dariia Lemesheva 

Hear me: 

@joecottonwood

Help

 

Help

My neighbor, a beauty, runs naked
into the woods chanting a sing-songy 
"Help me, help help, me me."
I find her rolling in thorns,
stuffing her mouth with leaves.
I say, "Please come with me."
She says, "Blackberry tea."

Dark electric hair
above dimpled thighs.
Dazed eyes.

The mind cannot tell what the flesh will not say.
She bleeds from back and butt.
I reach out my hand.
She flees barefoot, through brambles.
Somebody has called the volunteer fire brigade.
We come upon her in the hollow of a redwood.
Again I offer my hand. She clutches
and suddenly pulls palm to belly.
In a jolt the fingers know all. 

Grit, sweat, womb. 
Flesh of madness 
as pulse, as tomb.

I am paralyzed.
A fireman takes her arm, 
wraps body in blanket,
stuffs her into the cab of 
a fire truck the color of blood. 
Responders remove helmets 
and yellow slicker raincoats.
Flashing lights go suddenly dark.
Radio sputters farewell; neighbors disperse. 
Soon street and forest are silent.
My hand still burns. 

…..

From my book Son of a Poet

Note: In touching a person you may learn that you are the one who is touched. Decades later I still remember the jolt I felt from this woman as the electric confusion of her brain passed through her belly to my fingers. 

Hear me: 

@joecottonwood

Hummingbirds hover

 

Hummingbirds hover

And yet here we are 
while brightly colored drones 
with needle lips 
invade by hundreds, by thousands 
from Canada to refuel 
at this drinking gourd of red plastic, 
to load sugar until ready 
to cross New England, 
cross mountains, suburbs and farms, 
cross non-stop the Gulf of Mexico

Next year survivors 
spirits of speed 
with throats sparkling of ruby 
will return, will build nests 
of silk stolen from spiders, 
nests the size of thimbles that stretch 
as nestlings grow into glory 
intricately engineered 
by nature’s design
for improbable endurance 
like you, dear reader, like you 

…..

First published in Wordpeace. Thank you editor Lee Desrosiers.

Hear me:

@joecottonwood

and the rain begins

 

and the rain begins

the only sound, this morn
a soft sheet of music
as a million felt-tip pens
with green ink
dot notes for a dance
over deep meadow

listen…
a gentle hissing
whisper of water
cools your nose and brow

now begin 
brushes on drumheads
tiptoe of mandolin
dum-dum the standup bass
bring on the marimbas

ringing the end
of wildfire season
worthy of symphony
a chorus rising

soul of all life
from above

…..

First published in Peacock Journal. Thank you editor Bill Lantry

Hear me: 

@joecottonwood

Night Walk

 

Night Walk

A spotted fawn 
wades the muddy brook. 
As hooves sink into the muck, 
as I blink—holy shit!—she transforms 
into a human.
A girl. 

Barefoot. 
Her nostrils, black. 
Eyes like bullets in my light. 
Her flesh pale, spotted red-brown, 
fawn-color in reverse. 

One breath-cloud by me 
and she turns tail, 
lovely white flag of alarm 
and leaps across the babbling water,
climbs the steep mudbank
to the fallen tree. She’s gone. 

John’s daughter,
shot at school one year ago.
What I saw—should I tell him? 

…..

First published in Rat’s Ass Review thanks to editor Roderick Bates

Hear me:

 

@joecottonwood

Tuesday Without Appendix

Tuesday Without Appendix

Warm day for walkabout 
but Terry’s bundled in sweater, wool hat. 
His body feedback is fucked 
because on Christmas Day, o sing noël, 
Terry felt what he describes as 
an oncoming three-cubic-yard fart 
that never arrived. Instead came fever, 
weird heartbeats, a surgeon like 
a teenage girl slicing three holes in Terry’s belly, 
mucking around to pull out a ruptured appendix. 
She patched a few leaks, pipe and valve repair, 
then backfilled the ditch and covered it 
with asphalt. No, wait, that comes later. 
She sewed the incisions with thread.

Walking the streets of town we pause 
so Terry can remove sweater, hat, long johns
because he is smelly with sweat. 
All the anesthesia stored itself in his fat cells, 
and now it’s pouring out as perspiration, 
so Terry strips himself as townsfolk wave 
from passing cars and Terry in his undershorts 
waves back because everybody knows Terry, 
and Terry knows every crusty pipe 
that wanders under roads into their houses. 
He remembers blockages, geysers, 
disasters of mud with Terry at the center 
manning a backhoe, a jackhammer. He points 
to ghosts of ditches dug, valves replaced, 
memories of muck tied up with surgical thread.
No, wait, I mean with giant pipe wrench, 
bright red, and these are good memories, 
for Terry takes satisfaction. He brings water. 

A walk with a friend heals the soul. 
At the end Terry, a hugger, tells me 
not today—he can’t risk infection. 
So he dons sweater and woolen hat,
kick-starts his old Kawasaki and is gone 
in a buzz, no hug but no blockage, 
no geyser. Flowing freely. 

…..

First published in I-70 Review. Thank you editors Maryfrances Wagner, Gary Lechliter, and Greg Field.

Hear me: 

@joecottonwood

Three Story House

 

Three Story House

We muscled the heavy, squinted the fine, 
made decisions you can’t design on paper 
but only with fingers in the moment.

Old Walt coughing, Marlboro dangling, 
hand-rubbed the wainscot to a rosy glow.
His final job. Lungs.

Paul the preacher 
moonlighting as plumber
installed the water heater badly
distracted by divorce, a repossessed car,
now preaches on sidewalks 
outside the bars.

Frank the tile setter with eleven children
in a three-room shack received messages 
from space aliens through his penis, 
he told me. Level and true, they said, 
set your lines level and true. 
His quiet wife simply smiled, 
home-schooled every child.

Years later, spirits still here. 
Fingermarks. Marlboro ashes 
in wainscot oil. Hot water, a blessing. 
Frank’s tiles set level and true 
where we shower each day 
with pores open, naked. 

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig  — thank you editor Hayley Mitchell Haugen 

Photo is of my own house, 1979. Look closely and you’ll see three workers. 

Hear me:

@joecottonwood

Atlantic City

 

Atlantic City

At a virgin age 
freshly growing fuzz
I’m walking the chilly beach— 
cross under a pier where 
smell is greenly wet. 
A man appears from among the pilings 
with a face like a chipmunk. 
He starts talking friendly 
so I respond sorta friendly with my voice 
cracking like a hee-haw donkey, and he says 
“Hey— you wanna go fuck around?” 

Two second pause as it dawns on me 
he means literally. He’s bigger
but I bet I’m quicker.
I say “No.” 

He steps away. 
It dawns on me he spends his days there
among the pilings like a hermit crab 
waiting, asking. 

And it dawns on me 
along this empty beach in winter 
so much is asked by the penis 
and I don’t know crap 
as surf keeps breaking, washing, 
breaking, teaching 
what I should learn.

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig  — thank you editor Hayley Mitchell Haugen 

Hear me:

@joecottonwood

Casey Road

 

Casey Road

Tell no one of this road remote 
beneath modest mountain
between curtains of forest. 

A few tire track slots blocked by chains,
signs POSTED (a complete statement) 
driveways snaking into mystery.

Here’s a clearing, a garden of beans,
a cabin with roof of blue tarp. 
A gutted pickup. 
Folks who own little but a chunk of forest
if you can own the wandering deer, moose, bear. 

Two hours walking, no traffic not one. 
We old lovers gather trash, mostly beer cans, 
one cracked soccer trophy 
and oddly in dirt among wild daisies
a shiny silver padlock—no key. 

Pileated peckers gouge old trees; 
quail with frowns flee our footsteps. 
Shush of pines, rattle of maples, 
scent of blue sky,
distant rush of river rapids,
accidental brush of our hands,
clink of cans we find we carry.

This peaceful paradise of modest trash— 
will the rich unlock, award trophies 
to themselves? Please—tell no one.

…..

First published in The Russell Streur Anthology 

Hear me: 

@joecottonwood