Three Poems by Caroline Cottom
Caroline Cottom
Caroline Cottom is the author of the poetry collection, Asylum (Main Street Rag, 2022), which describes her mother’s life as a sharecropper’s daughter and the effect of the mother’s later decisions on her two daughters. The manuscript pays homage to the female residents of former insane asylums as the poet reflects on—and works to heal—her family’s history of generational sexual abuse. Caroline is also the former director of the US coalition that helped bring an end to nuclear test explosions in Nevada. Her poetry manuscript-in-progress, “Passage to Fiji,” focuses on the spiritual awakening the poet experienced living on a rain forest island.
St. Elmo’s Fire
Oaring toward an unknown shore,
I dream a horizon
where a boat with yellow sails
plies purple waters.
Estelle leaves a message on my phone:
Your mother is dead.
In my mother’s rooms, sheets
furled with blood and phlegm,
her gurgling cries for air.
Maggots burrow into sweet rolls,
mold devours beans. Dozens
of empty vin rosé bottles in closets
and under her bed.
I weep more for her life than for her death.
After the funeral, Angela invites me for tea.
I’m painting again. Come, see.
In her studio, walls float
a dozen canvases of boats with yellow sails.
She gives me this: a catboat
driving against a purple tempest,
its sail filled with unconscionable light.
The mast crackles with St. Elmo’s fire.
In the boat, three evergreen trees
and a sailor caped by night.
The Green Bedroom
The map a Mercator projection, a pendulum
swings wildly over Fiji.
Outside the sunroom, echinacea in full bloom;
pink peonies and crepe myrtles, a garden
becoming. This is how we calibrate
our green bedroom, a kind of rain forest longing.
The prospect of maple leaves turning and falling,
I cross Mercator’s equator to secure our fate.
You, my husband, await my return, comfort
our rescue cat Mews, who will be unable to travel.
I do not anticipate the distance to Fiji—boxes
ferried by ship, faces I’ll forget, losses
I’ll encounter. Specks of islands float
on a wide, flat sea—splayed on our kitchen table.
Leaky Mask
I couldn’t face
the water
the music
the facts
I thought I could
I wanted to see
what was underneath
(the minke whale
coral reefs
colored fish)
the ocean too
harsh for me
and my mask leaked
I did not ask anyone
for help
I couldn’t get in
the water
like I couldn’t get in
the body
my father left of me