Kelli Russell Agodon - 2
What the Universe Makes of LingerieIt’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 PsychicExpect 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 ButterfliesWhat 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 HabitsWe 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. 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. ♢ |
Yakima Ferry at SunsetTonight 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 DrowningYou 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
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