Kerry Cox Poetry

i had the gut feeling
i wouldn’t be ready
to head home 

but your trees
stopped stooping
to touch me

the old spare bed
lay empty in june
tea cups empty

on a dirty table
my elbows hurt
like broken feathers

i never had the kind
of bones that showed
bright white on xrays

so we took a long time
to say goodbye, blew
kisses through open doorways

now i sit chanting
slightly crazed by moonlight
in another northern town

my mouth moves like it’s
trying to make notes, sing
some messy blues

and i march in place on old
floorboards, remember the
dreams full of hanging moss

raised spirits, cracked concrete
voodoo mornings face down
in a humid hangover from a night of wild poems

we never asked what comes next
or how much it would cost
the fires made themselves, put themselves out

i had the premonition that the wind
on the levee would do more than cancel
our afternoon plans

tear down the pecan trees
and leave us bored in your
grandparents’ house

when they fled for higher ground.
your bartending friends forgot 
to send you home at night

the sirens grew loud, bright
at night, growling animals stalked
the fence posts knowing i was foreign

no matter how much i wanted 
to belong to a city full of poison
my body loved to drink

festive devastation

renditions of the 
wounded healers
heading out to 
regale the wind

with totems and 
feathers, sunbeam-stricken
strummed.

the numb, new days
named for imagined
features uncreated
resurrected

a tremor rising, earthquake
drowned scream wobbling
in tremulous temptations.

you knew the shamans, 
the wicked, the holy
by the way their palms curled
and the hair brushing 
against shining
shoulders

limping these streetlight 
stamped scavenger hunted
choruses, made for wider
throats, emptier hearts.

it didn’t need a name
a hiding place. a tattoo, 
dedication, ceremony. 

a funeral. eulogy.

a day like this, trees
done bowing
lake shaking
whiter
than 
ghosts.

(Source: kerrycoxpoetry)

quantums

Pin down my molecules in black body rotation
I won’t behave in any respect
Like the spectral energies you are attracted to
Particles unleashed to dance and connect
.
Instantaneously entangled twins
The spin of an ultraviolet catastrophe
Coming back to haunt the irrelevant distances 
Measured between bodies named you and me
.
Light falls through as temperature rises,
Erasing the need for shyness or skeptic
Glowing from red, yellow, white to blue
The frequency intensely photoelectric
.
Across a threshold held by many
Compromising without comprehending
Standing waves in a jumping matrix
Orbiting essences breaking and bending
.
The uncertainty of our own momentum
Caught in a position close to collapse
Clouding the speed of our own indecisions
Symmetrical strength stuck in our own traps.

(Source: kerrycoxpoetry)

there i did not need
to wonder

you weren’t a dancer
or a mystery

the blood came quick
when the skin split

the night was as dark
as it should be.

time did not stand or sit
or grow still

the forest was full of
noises 

there i did not need
to whisper

you weren’t a long distance runner
or a widower

the nose followed scents
honey and flowers and spring rain

families hungered and fed
each other

songs had beginnings and middles
and ends.

children laughed, got to
be children

mothers remembered those
names and days of birthing

there i was not an invisible
presence waiting

you weren’t a moth at the porchlight
or a man i onced loved.

(Source: kerrycoxpoetry)

i have sons in sidewinds that blow across tall green 
bridges, 

no one has seen the wordless way
i stumble through the dangerous days alone.

gorgeously famous, our old letters wither
on clotheslines. the sad old cars slump into
unmown grass.

i have daughters dumping rain water across
neighbors’ gardens. they won’t eat apples for
fear of dead snakes that hiss like nightmares.

my own fear wreaks havoc on the bed sheets, the
pillow cases of a large black bed i bought
one winter. i carve the posts with an 

old nail file my grandmother brought back 
from a trip one may. she made me promise i
wouldn’t bite my fingernails for
the whole time she was gone. 

did she know i’d never make it?

(Source: kerrycoxpoetry)