Poems by Charles Cote
Ars Poetic: That Dragonfly
It buzzed you in this blue blue light
where every eye and ear could feel
the burden of your metastatic song.
So near your head an iridescence
of our fear and hope that you’d hold on.
We took it as a good omen,
every reason to believe, and we believed
the transmutation of those stained glass wings,
that distillation we could barely fathom,
what remains as long as you’ve been gone,
that distillation we could barely fathom,
the transmutation of those stained glass wings,
every reason to believe, and we believed.
We took it as a good omen
of our fear and hope that you’d hold on,
so near your head an iridescence,
the burden of your metastatic song
where every eye and ear could feel
it buzz you in this blue blue light.
Hangover
I drowned the fire of losing you, burned
with every glass of bourbon, tumbled
over jags of ice dropped in the glass,
dropped in a labyrinth of amber, dizzy
with malaise. I downed each shot
to quell the accusations, well past
moderation to a throbbing,
incessant bell I tried to mute
with every round, my heart racing
toward a quiet vasodilation.
Save me Elijah, most Reverend Craig,
from the nausea each morning when I
wake to the absence, when I’m
scoured and hammered,
wrecked and unkempt, when
even my hair hurts.
Charles Cote is a clinical social worker in private practice and the author of Flying for the Window (Finishing Line Press, 2008), a book of poems about the loss of his firstborn son to cancer in 2005. His most recent work has appeared in Barrow Street, Big City Lit, Connotation Press, Ducts, and Terminus, forthcoming in Quiddity. He teaches poetry at Writers & Books, writes poems on demand for Poetically Connect with a vintage 1940 Royal typewriter, and serves as the board chair for 13thirty Cancer Connect.
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