Mouse Trails
I love the night filled with its dry awakenings
Like my X, filled with dust and cobwebs.
Friends, that’s as lazy as it gets. The distorted
Railroad, the unsettling pre-depletion. Bucolic
Tides at the hospital, the murder that has already
Been tried. What I am equipped to do is different
Than what I have been called for. That’s a
Statement that cannot be retracted. There. The
Blood around the desert – we call this ‘sport’.
The pugilistic greetings in doorways, the grass
Underneath these snows, love holds its humid
Moments like a sailor who has never arrived.
The thick exile of this parabolic season, the
Way you used to talk to me, gone into mouse trails.
—Noelle Kocot
—found in Granta (Issue 133: Autumn 2015; “What Have We Done?”)