Poems November 2020

To a snail

Like flesh, or consciousness inhabited
by flesh, willful, bold, très chic, the skin
on your gelid body is brownish from age
and secretes viscid slime from your flat
muscular foot, like script, as if Agnes Martin
had wed Caravaggio, and then, after rainfall,
you ran away, crossing a wet road with Fiats
rushing past. Where is your partner?
Contemplating your tentacles and house,
gliding on a trace of mucus from some
dark stone to who knows where,
why do I feel happiness? It’s a long game—
the whole undignified, insane attempt at living—
so I’ve relocated you to the woods.

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Henri Cole’s eleventh collection, Gravity and Center: Selected Sonnets, 1994–2022, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Topics: Poetry

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To a snail by Henri Cole

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To a snail by Henri Cole

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