Dialogues with Rising Tides - Softcover

Agodon, Kelli Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556596154 ISBN 13: 9781556596155

Verlag: Copper Canyon Press, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

In Kelli Russell Agodon’s fourth collection, each poem facilitates a humane and honest conversation with the forces that threaten to take us under. The anxieties and heartbreaks of life―including environmental collapse, cruel politics, and the persistent specter of suicide―are met with emotional vulnerability and darkly sparkling humor. Dialogues with Rising Tides does not answer, This or that? It passionately exclaims, And also! Even in the midst of great difficulty, radiant wonders are illuminated at every turn.

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"I Don't Own Anxiety, But I Borrow It Regularly

Once I believed the saint I carried could keep me
safe. He lived in a rain jacket I wore
to keep out the weather and by weather,
I mean danger. Tell me a story
where no one dies. That story begins in heaven,
ends in heaven and includes chapters
on heaven, heaven, and heaven.

It's not really story, but wish or a concern.

Sometimes I wonder if there's one moment
when no one is dying, where we all exist
on this planet without loss―
but there are too many of us
doing foolish things, someone is always sipping
the arsenic, someone is always spinning
a gun. And then,

add old age, misfortune, a tree that's leaned too long
in the forest and a family of five
headed off for a hike.

We cannot predict our tragedies.

We cannot plan a party for the apocalypse
because friends of the apocalypse know
the apocalypse always shows up
uninvited with a half-eaten bag of chips.

This is why some of us wake up
in the middle of the night looking for a saint―
and maybe your saint is a streetlight
or maybe the sea, or maybe
it's the moment you walk out the door
and exist in the darkness,
announce to the heavens that you're still alive.


Whiskey-Sour-of-the-Nipple Story

Like every forest, I carry a bonfire
beneath my shirt. And my mattress?
It's a featherbed of flames.

I'd want to write you a letter about longing,
but it has so many wishbone moments
you'd break, I promise. You―

you'd end up crying or cowarding,
or being part of the crocodile-tear
audience asking for a refund. Like most

lovers, my heartstone is actually heartbutter,
a heart murmur made of wax and it melts,
it smolders, the way the moth

isn't suspicious of a lighter
until it moves too close to the fire.
This is my danger―

I kiss the whalebone without wondering
what happened to the whale.
It's inexperience watching

the mercury drip onto my tongue―
seeing only the beauty of silver,
not the poison of a perfect teardrop,

like him. Or her. And still.
Let's not be the part of the drink
that melts into something weaker.

Like any darling, I trust too much.
Even a burning building has a purpose,
as the whiskey does, the nipple, the novel.

So let's begin the story here. Near the plastic
ocean. Our shirts off. Our drinks filled.
A bowl of cherries. Believing there aren’t any.

Wildfires in sight.



Hunger
If we never have enough love, we have more than most.
We have lost dogs in the neighborhood and wild coyotes,
and sometimes we can't tell them apart. Sometimes
we don't want to. Once I brought home a coyote and told
my lover that we had a new pet. Until it ate our chickens.
Until it ate our chickens, our ducks, and our cat. Sometimes
we make mistakes and call them coincidences. We hold open
the door then wonder how the stranger ended up in our home.
There is a woman on our block who thinks she is feeding bunnies,
but they are large rats without tails. Remember the farmer's wife?
Remember the carving knife? We are all trying to change
what we fear into something beautiful. But even rats need to eat.
Even rats and coyotes and the bones on the trail could be the bones
on our plates. I ordered Cornish hen. I ordered duck. Sometimes
love hurts. Sometimes the lost dog doesn't need to be found.

The Sun Doesn’t Know It’s a Star

We live in a world where every season begins
with a bullet exiting a shadow

and someone praying for her lilacs, for her
honeysuckle to take root. It's a hundred degrees

in the shade and the weather argues with itself
over who has the better candidate―

stop you're both wrong, the sky wins
by a meteor shower. The stars aren't watching

television tonight, they're out waltzing
through modern galaxies, a ballroom

of ghosts where everything is about daybreak
and dazzle, how much moondust will trail

into the house. Somewhere between ego
and starshine, we lost our hatbox of kindness,

maybe we stored it in the back closet because fear
seemed much more dramatic on the living-

room table. And we wonder why we think
our neighbor's a spy and everyone is so on edge.

Some days the stranger planting honeysuckle
to stabilize the cliff leans too far

into the galaxy and we fall
into her optimism. Trust what you don’t

know, like the honeybees that rise
from the heart of the canyon, watch them

like small suns circling the slight blossoms,
watch them slide in, knowing

even a small amount of nectar
is a greater sum than none.
"

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Copper Canyon Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1556596154
• ISBN 13: 9781556596155
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 96
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar