Of Shock
Sudden blow bundle of grain a surprise a heap of sheaves
meaning trade
with the Dutch
A thick mass of your hair on the brush in the pillow in my
mouth
When an electric current passes through all or part of the body
How I wish to collide violently with myself
To throw troops into confusion by charging at them
The shock of cold water the shock of wedding cake shoved in
my mouth
Stuttering heartbeat felt by a hand on the chest wall
A knife in a light socket
Pile or stack of unthreshed corn
And what is myself without you
Push your hair into my mouth
Will you collide violently with me
Will you be a decision inflicted upon my body
A bundle unthreshed and untethered
The shock of
Jar impact collapse
Flash of my white nightgown in our dark yard
Copyright © 2016 by Nicole Cooley. Used with permission of the author.
“‘Of Shock’ is from a new series of poems I am writing that invoke and intervene with dictionary definitions, poems that start with abstractions and then go somewhere else, poems that reverse my usual impulse to begin with an image. I love working on these poems because they force me back to the materiality of language and return me to the childhood pleasure in words, while at the same time helping me to work with subject matter that otherwise lies buried.”
—Nicole Cooley
Nicole Cooley
Nicole Cooley's first book of poetry, Resurrection (Louisiana State University Press, 1996), was chosen by Cynthia Macdonald to receive the 1995 Walt Whitman Award.