Fall 2017, Volume 23

Poetry by Kelli Russell Agodon

Lonely Together

She wanted to take desire, but instead
she decided to become a heartbeat
by standing on ledges and to understand
the view. She’s settling on settling,
well, that’s what she says when the traffic
is mostly exhaust, when heartbreak
is a raffle ticket she didn’t mean to buy.
She returns to what isn’t hers—desire
and an open mouth, god splattering
enough light on the unmade bed
to make what once looked like clouds,
look like dust—god and the exhaust
of a relationship. If you want me to reveal her
secret—it’s that it’s easier to pick up cufflinks,
iron the shirtsleeves than to be alone,
it’s easier to ignore the bees in the walls
than knock down the walls of a good house
and build again.

 

 

 

BIO: Kelli Russell Agodon’s most recent book, Hourglass Museum, was a Finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Poetry Prize, and her second book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room was chosen for the Foreword Book of the Year Prize for poetry. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and book cover designer. She is an avid paddleboarder and hiker who has a fondness for kingfishers and hammocks. She lives in a sleepy seaside town a ferry ride away from Seattle and is working on her fourth collection of poems. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com