Amplitudes of sunlight, the incongruousNight. See me looking in that window,Bereft, drunk, wasting all my time. Here,My garden is thinning, the blue shadowsOf the sky on the deck in twilight. WhatLongs for spirit is only a body. I wouldSay anything to have one, again, again.There’s nothing that’s mine here, and ITravel so light. The moon huge, the newBlooms opening by faith. Drunk, I sleptOn the stairs, and the mercury lamps flared betweenWorlds. What pushes toward the future,What grows without us, this is what I want,And a few birds on a dock, the unfathomable water.
Drunk
Noelle Kocot
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- July 2, 2025
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Noelle Kocot, “Drunk” from Ascent of the Mothers, copyright 2023. Reprinted with permission of the author and Wave Books.
Noelle Kocot is the author of many collections of poetry, including Ascent of the Mothers (November 2023), God’s Green Earth (Wave Books, 2020), Phantom Pains of Madness (Wave Books, May 2016), Soul in Space (Wave Books, 2013), The Bigger World (Wave Books, 2011), and a book of translations of some of the poems of Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default (Wave Books, 2011). Their previous works include the discography Damon’s Room, (Wave Books Pamphlet Series, 2010), Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books, 2009) and Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books, 2006). They are also the author of 4 and The Raving Fortune (both from Four Way Books). Their poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry in 2001, 2012, and 2013. They are the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, The Fund for Poetry, the American Poetry Review, and a residency fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Kocot has taught at the University of Texas New Writers’ Project and currently teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the New School. They are the poet laureate of Pemberton Borough, New Jersey.
Noelle Kocot’s ninth collection, Ascent of the Mothers, is a sagacious testament to the ways in which poetry can shape personhood. “I am nothing” they write, “Or else I have made myself / Too big for words.” The scope of this book is marked by Kocot’s psychic journey punctuated by a near-fatal car crash, which elicited a new understanding of their spirituality and gender nonconforming identity. Generous, self-aware, and resilient, Ascent of the Mothers is a treasure to behold and be shared.
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