Dialogues with Rising Tides - Softcover

Agodon, Kelli Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556596154 ISBN 13: 9781556596155

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press, 2021

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

<b>"I Don't Own Anxiety, But I Borrow It Regularly</b><br> <br>Once I believed the saint I carried could keep me<br> safe. He lived in a rain jacket I wore <br> to keep out the weather and by weather, <br>I mean danger. Tell me a story <br> where no one dies. That story begins in heaven, <br> ends in heaven and includes chapters <br>on heaven, heaven, and heaven. <br> <br>It's not really story, but wish or a concern.<br><br>Sometimes I wonder if there's one moment <br> when no one is dying, where we all exist <br> on this planet without loss—<br>but there are too many of us <br> doing foolish things, someone is always sipping <br> the arsenic, someone is always spinning <br>a gun. And then, <br><br>add old age, misfortune, a tree that's leaned too long <br> in the forest and a family of five <br>headed off for a hike. <br><br>We cannot predict our tragedies. <br> <br>We cannot plan a party for the apocalypse <br> because friends of the apocalypse know<br> the apocalypse always shows up <br>uninvited with a half-eaten bag of chips.<br><br>This is why some of us wake up <br> in the middle of the night looking for a saint—<br> and maybe your saint is a streetlight<br>or maybe the sea, or maybe <br> it's the moment you walk out the door<br> and exist in the darkness,<br>announce to the heavens that you're still alive.<br><br><br><b>Whiskey-Sour-of-the-Nipple Story</b><br><br>Like every forest, I carry a bonfire <br> beneath my shirt. And my mattress? <br> It's a featherbed of flames.<br><br>I'd want to write you a letter about longing, <br> but it has so many wishbone moments <br> you'd break, I promise. You— <br><br>you'd end up crying or cowarding, <br> or being part of the crocodile-tear <br> audience asking for a refund. Like most <br><br>lovers, my heartstone is actually heartbutter, <br> a heart murmur made of wax and it melts, <br> it smolders, the way the moth <br><br>isn't suspicious of a lighter <br> until it moves too close to the fire.<br> This is my danger—<br><br>I kiss the whalebone without wondering <br> what happened to the whale. <br> It's inexperience watching <br><br>the mercury drip onto my tongue—<br> seeing only the beauty of silver, <br> not the poison of a perfect teardrop, <br><br>like him. Or her. And still.<br> Let's not be the part of the drink <br> that melts into something weaker. <br><br>Like any darling, I trust too much. <br> Even a burning building has a purpose, <br> as the whiskey does, the nipple, the novel. <br> <br>So let's begin the story here. Near the plastic<br> ocean. Our shirts off. Our drinks filled. <br> A bowl of cherries. Believing there aren’t any. <br> <br>Wildfires in sight.<br><br><br><br><b>Hunger</b><br>If we never have enough love, we have more than most.<br>We have lost dogs in the neighborhood and wild coyotes, <br>and sometimes we can't tell them apart. Sometimes<br>we don't want to. Once I brought home a coyote and told<br>my lover that we had a new pet. Until it ate our chickens.<br>Until it ate our chickens, our ducks, and our cat. Sometimes<br>we make mistakes and call them coincidences. We hold open<br>the door then wonder how the stranger ended up in our home.<br>There is a woman on our block who thinks she is feeding bunnies, <br>but they are large rats without tails. Remember the farmer's wife?<br>Remember the carving knife? We are all trying to change <br>what we fear into something beautiful. But even rats need to eat.<br>Even rats and coyotes and the bones on the trail could be the bones<br>on our plates. I ordered Cornish hen. I ordered duck. Sometimes <br>love hurts. Sometimes the lost dog doesn't need to be found.<br><br><b>The Sun Doesn’t Know It’s a Star</b><br><br>We live in a world where every season begins <br>with a bullet exiting a shadow <br><br>and someone praying for her lilacs, for her <br>honeysuckle to take root. It's a hundred degrees <br><br>in the shade and the weather argues with itself <br>over who has the better candidate—<br><br>stop you're both wrong, the sky wins <br>by a meteor shower. The stars aren't watching <br><br>television tonight, they're out waltzing <br>through modern galaxies, a ballroom <br><br>of ghosts where everything is about daybreak<br>and dazzle, how much moondust will trail <br><br>into the house. Somewhere between ego<br>and starshine, we lost our hatbox of kindness, <br><br>maybe we stored it in the back closet because fear <br>seemed much more dramatic on the living-<br><br>room table. And we wonder why we think <br>our neighbor's a spy and everyone is so on edge.<br> <br>Some days the stranger planting honeysuckle <br>to stabilize the cliff leans too far <br><br>into the galaxy and we fall <br>into her optimism. Trust what you don’t<br><br>know, like the honeybees that rise <br>from the heart of the canyon, watch them<br><br>like small suns circling the slight blossoms, <br>watch them slide in, knowing <br><br>even a small amount of nectar <br>is a greater sum than none.<br>"<br>

Edition details

• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1556596154
• ISBN 13: 9781556596155
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96