3 Poems for Joe Cooper on His 31st Birthday

Alternating Lines of Joe Cooper and Maureen Owen

(Because we met in Maureen Owen's class)


Because we have gone on trying
pointing in different directions
stuborn laughs of sad error
bounced into the trees
without eliminations,
pointing to things absent
a slippage
left behind & where are my pyjamas
memorably laid out,
wrinkles and slides
quietly broken
tucked in a virtue saint of dropped futures
gods, many voices
snack food for the fishes
sleepy, it might snarl
glances parted the air struggling
constructing a
memory made of flower printed umbrellas
& oddly disturbing
dance like a drummer dreaming
toward the door we never opened

*

Things in Joe's Poetry (Sonnet)


teabags and rank and tones and grapefruit and
paint and stirrups and buoy and tongues and
prosthetics and tags and static and meanings
and gloves and perimeters and artiface and
rodent and masks and veterans and filth and rain
and cardboard and sandpaper and papier mache
and hedges and trampoline and cello and tooth-
paste and The Twilight Zone and bible and demon
and war and battery and fingers and Bambi and
body and telephone and navel and panel and
corpse and jewels and disposition and baseball
cap and thighs and bath and crack and
Trophies and photographs and thongs and
boxes and concert and grimace and mirror and knob

*

20 one-word homages for Joe

bohoemoth
.
o r G A S m !
.
A R I O S A
.
t t h i m b l e
.
Gram Parsons
.
trunbuckle
.
i c k l y
.
onsider
.
y s p h e m i a
.
k y j e r
.
e e c h
.
"tirer-les-marrons-du-feu"
.
i p s o
.
tugger
.
o ou g h
.
U R i n a l
.
p a b l u m
.
f r a g m e n
.
t o u l o u s e
.
m n y m p h