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Ballerinas by Noelle Kocot

A moth lamenting its wings, how
To worship? We are so famished,
Such a fantastic job on the ceilings
And the doors. Curtains, sky, the 

Domesticated fog creeps over the
East. But here, we reach a different
Conclusion. Who is to invent the
Value of our soft caresses, who is to

Say who is missing? The waves
Misunderstood their dry sufferings.
The moated birds misheard their
Wingspans. A bitten moon hangs

Above winter. The little teeth of
Ballerinas keep us warm, full of life. 

 

Noelle Kocot is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, Soul in Space (Wave Books, 2013). She has also translated some of the poetry of Tristan Corbiere from the French, and they appear in a book called Poet by Default (Wave Books, 2011). She has received numerous awards for her work, including those from The Lannan Literary Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fund for Poetry. Kocot’s work has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Poetry 2001, 2012 and 2013 and in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, and she now lives in New Jersey.