The Head of the Cottonmouth
Why would I abandon the hunger-suffering
Vulture, spread-winged in the middle of the road
Eating a rabbit while it snows? Wouldn’t you
Want to touch, watch his comrades close down the sky
And, in a black circle, eat red on the white Earth?
And when the hiss of something slithers in—
Panic un-paused—wouldn’t you watch the circle
Break into black leaves pulled from the earth and flung
Into the falling sky? Wouldn’t you want to be
A servant of this paradise, not a God
In front of a screen, naked, lonely, asking—
No more a God than the crown of vultures
Frightened by a hiss that was a tire deflating?
Why would you trade Paradise for an argument
About Paradise?
Copyright © 2023 by Roger Reeves. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 19, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem is part of a longer series of poems called ‘The Head of the Cottonmouth’ and ‘The Cottonmouth’s Head.’ The series started with an incident with a cottonmouth in Arkansas and the ritual of cutting off its head and burying it far away from the body. I began to think of this sort of ritual in relationship to other rituals around fear, cleanliness, disease, and the pandemic. The pandemic caused many of us to retreat behind our screens and seek validation there, distancing us from others as well as ourselves. This poem asks us to come back to ourselves, to our finitude, to our hungers.”
—Roger Reeves
Roger Reeves
Roger Reeves earned his PhD from the University of Texas, Austin, and is the author of Dark Days: Fugitive Essays (Graywolf Press, 2023), winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and a John C. Zacharis First Book Award.