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Kelli Russell Agodon - 2


What the Universe Makes of Lingerie

It’s impossible to see a black bra
directly as no light can escape from it;
still there are supernovas, dark matter,

meteorites in its path. The black bra
understands its usefulness is overrated.
It’s problematic under a white

shirt of a white woman, unprofessional
peeking out of a blazer. To see
observational evidence of black bras

you do not need to borrow
the Hubble telescope to view the Hourglass
Nebula, their existence is well-supported,

a gravitational field so strong
nothing can escape. Black bras
​can be found in the back of a Vega

between the vinyl seats. It is the star
the boy wishes on—he is never the master
of the unhook, Orion unfastening

his constellation belt. Let it remain
a mystery, something almost seen,
almost touched in a Galaxy. I’d call it

rocketworthy, but there is cosmic
censorship, naked singularities
to consider. The black bra has electric

charge, too close to the event horizon,
a man disappears in its loophole, escape
velocity equal to the speed of light.
​

With a Dream Psychic

Expect a sort of heaven to appear
in your living room by Friday.

This may mean you will die soon
or that life will be easy for a while.

It depends on the angels.

Bleeding and begging angels are never a good sign.
If they were singing gospel and wearing halos,
then expect answers to circle you.

But if you wore their wings, be cautious
of bulldozers, unicycles, anything with wheels.

Yes, even cars. Good question.

Don’t borrow from visitors this week.

Try to talk to the angels when they appear,
especially the one with a machete.
He has your secret. Be lucid. Soar with him.

You don’t need his wings to fly. Trust me
on this. You’re not the first to dream
of angels with weapons. I’ve known presidents
with that same type of guilt.

No, not every dream has to do with sex,
only the good ones.

And that white picket fence you observed,
it signifies peace of mind. You’ll soon be free
from anxiety. Unless it was in ruins.

You may now offer my soul fifty dollars.

Your lucky number is eight.
Your power color is white.
Your psychic insect is the mirror beetle.

Slow Waltz on a Hike with Damp Butterflies

What you unwrap is box
of yellowjackets, stinging
nettles, and jellyjars
 
becoming broken glass.
This is not for the cottonhearted.
This is for the man who holds fire
 
between his fingers and calls it love.
We are burnt
toast and prism jam.
 
We are rubbing ourselves with the underside
of a fern trying to make the stinging stop.
There are remedies everywhere--
 
from beekeeper’s honey to handmade soap
—we are what we keep near our skin.
We are the stained
 
towels we carry and the sainted
bohemian monarchs that can’t fly.
Or don’t want to.
 
I place the constellations in my hand, then
complain about the burning. Life sparks,
weighs me down when I am tired.
 
Let’s not say we have rocks
in our pockets. Though I pretend I am
the novelist and you are the river.

Slow Waltz Where Your New Life Meets Your Old Habits

We lived or loved, or didn’t 
mow the lawn. We waited 
for dusk, for satellites, for the opening 
 
of a book or a door. We felt the only
words were escape or escapade,
yet we couldn't decide which
 
to choose. We drank hot brandy
on cold ridiculous nights
and said how when pleasure
 
refused us we would find it
and knock it down. 
We said better than never, better 
 
let the checks roll in, better not be 
an impossible mailbox sealed shut.
Maybe the thank you cards
 
we never wrote for our wedding gifts
that didn't matter. Maybe 
they’d just be paper crockpots
 
stored in someone else’s home.
We lived and loved, and did it
in clover-filled grass. Maybe
 
the miracle didn't resist us, maybe
we just never found it, 
as we slept under a moon 
 
 that kept trying to pin us down.

Read more love poems at Tweetspeak Poetry

If I Ever Mistake You For a Poem

No body was ever composed
from words, not the hipsway

of verse, the iambic beat of a heart.
Yet inside you, a sestina

of arteries, the villanelle of villi,
sonnets between your shoulder blades.

If I were more obsessive I’d follow
the alliteration of age spots across

your arms. But I have exchanged
my microscope for a stethoscope

as I want to listen inside you, past
your repetition, your free verse of skin.  

How easy it is to fall for your internal
organs.  Your arrhythmia is charming  

hidden in the ballad of body,
your gurgling stanzas, your lyric sigh.
​

Letter to an Absentee Landlord

I write letters to God
       and answers don’t appear
        in words, but in blue jays

and beetles, in hummingbird
    beaks.  I’m spinning
    my wings and hungry.


What God doesn’t say is,
    You are not your salary.
    Practice this a million times
.

God says through the honeysuckle:
    Allergy season is three weeks away.
    And sometimes: Your father died

and you still feel that pain.  No one
    wanted my father’s birdhouses. 
    No one wanted years

of soap on a rope.  I donated it all 
    to charities.  I didn’t eat
    for weeks after losing

my opening act, the comedian
    with wide ties and broken body. 
    Now in my reflection, veins appear,

lines where there were no lines
    before. I finger a prayer
    on a steamy bathroom mirror.

Practice this a million times.
    I dust, fill a closet with linens,
    a comforter, pillows.

What I really need is sleep,
    what I really need is the squawk
    of a blue jay to wake me up.

​
                  ♢
Picture

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Yakima Ferry at Sunset

Tonight I could write a thousand poems
no one should have to read.
 
All around me are hippie grandmothers
and grey-haired men with dreamcatchers
 
hanging from the rearview mirrors of their
Isuzu’s.  Everyone is irresistible tonight: 
 
the man in his NRA t-shirt, the child
on the upper deck screaming about licorice,
 
the woman who cut in front of me to buy a latte.
I am skimming the edges like every poet
 
on this boat, starting my sentences
with the easiest words--I love, I love, I love
 
to travel home by ferry, the women
who smile at the men they don't know,
 
how my tongue feels in my mouth,
a sort of heaviness that never leaves.

​

Helping My Parents Shop for His & Her Coffins

Mom touches a casket and yawns.  
Death is a long overdue nap.

She likes the pale satin,
not the minty-green box.

She wants a home in the afterlife
that is worm-resistant
and a contraption to signal
the world if she is buried alive.

My dad tries to tell her this never happens,
but she says she once heard a story
about a grave they opened in Kent
and inside the coffin they found
scratch marks in the fabric of the lid.  

She wants to be buried with a cellphone
or a string attached to a bell
placed above the ground.

My dad says people will bother the bell
and the silver could attract crows.

She says she’s tired and these coffins
remind her of Vegas
where everything is too shiny.  

My parents leave with the pamphlet
for the classic pine box.

Driving home, they talk about the sky,
how it seems to roll on forever
without a hint of fog.  

Fragments of A Dissected Word

Because it’s easier to rename,
to change what I can’t fix--
now depression belongs 

to someone else.  I mix up
the letters and say,

I’m just taking care of Red’s ponies,
instead of having to say    
I’m falling apart.

And I take this word further,
say I am filled with sin or speed,
piss or need, or deep sins--

deep deep sins.
But this word--depression
—I read it inside out:  persons die,

a ripened SOS. 
And when it’s around, I become
a side person,         posed, risen,

I am opened, sirs. 
I can rearrange the letters
but I cannot arrange it

from my life. 
Like playing Clue:
it was sis in the den with a rope,
 
I keep waiting to find out
the ending,

Rose, I spend my nights awake
and all those years I didn’t tell you,
I pressed on.

Ghosts

My husband asks for a poem.
I have many, but none

to share. I live in a house
of irises where I am a ghost

searching for words
in my family’s mouths.

They ask me to stop
looking and learn to cook,

love them. My husband
hands me my ring and asks why

I forget to wear it.
We smile for the photograph

only because we want to be remembered
as happy.  And we are

children wanting to please
the person behind the camera

and future generations
who will see us.

I try to carry my family
in letters, in my suit pocket

as I walk to the podium
to read my poems.

They are small
ghosts in the paper. 

Their meal is ginger ale
and burnt toast.

Every window in my mind
faces them, and when I turn

away, they still wave to me,
ask for their voices back.

Letter to My Sister Who is Still Drowning

You tell me about the ovenbird,
its orange crown traveling swamps after sunset.

You tell me it keeps an infant under its wing
and that birds sense children underwater.

The dishes have soaked overnight
and though you know it’s just your reflection
between suds, you mention Jude,
how saints appear in the waves of every body
of water.

We never talk about the summer you disappeared
into the lake, a kingfisher hovering over the shadow
of where you just were

How I watched from land, watched water
exit from your chest, your mouth
in a burst as our father tossed you to shore
shouting:
             Breathe, breathe!

Sometimes, I don’t know how to respond
when you open the refrigerator door and laugh
because you see a vision in the cantaloupe.

Someone has carved Mary into the orange center,
you say as if this world has not flooded around us,
as if everything in this life made sense.


Speech Lessons
                        The fewer words, the better prayer
                            —Martin Luther

Because the girl didn’t speak
until she was sixteen,
when she spoke

a bicycle rolled from her tongue,
spinning down a hill

past the stop sign, a red sink
of pots to the dyslexic housewife,

past a charm of goldfinches,
a storytelling of ravens,
an alphabet of jays,

past a mailbox of chain letters
and the mailman humming
a bag filled with notes.

Because the girl confused language
for languor, she rested her head
on a pillow and the bicycle

crashed into the headboard,
wheels spinning, spokes
flying into prayer.
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***

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