Dialogues with Rising Tides. Kelli Russell Agodon
Читать онлайн.| Название | Dialogues with Rising Tides |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Kelli Russell Agodon |
| Жанр | Зарубежные стихи |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | Зарубежные стихи |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9781619322394 |
How to Live in a State of Fire
We Could Go On Indefinitely Being Swept Off Our Feet
Thank You for Saving Me, Someday I’ll Save You Too
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.
STRING THEORY RELATIONSHIPS
The essential idea is this—the man you love is connected to you
no matter what, but he’s also connected to the woman
down the street with the small dog that barks at the lilacs,
and she’s connected to the cashier at the market who’s a bit rough
with your grapes, but he thinks you’re ten years younger than you are
and he gives you free saltwater taffy while calling you
darling—but he also calls her darling, and her dog
darling, and the man you love along with the grapes.
The essential idea is this—all objects are composed of vibrating anxieties
—everyone wants a window or aisle seat and no one wants to sit
in the middle. Call it deniability. Call it the flashlight you keep
by the door never works in emergencies. We are all connected
by the blast that brought us here, the big bang,
the slam dunk, the heavy petting. We can’t always be pretty.
We can’t always be the eyelash and the wink, sometimes
we have to be the ear, sometimes the mouth. You are
and are not the speaker in this story—you are the bridge connected
to the land connected to the man you love and the woman you dislike
who teaches spin class. It’s not personal. It’s not personal
when the universe says it’s complicated and you have ten minutes
to understand quantum physics. When the man you love says
there’s a new connection called supersymmetry and it exists
between two fundamentally different types of particles called bosons
and fermions, you hear bosoms and females. You hear he’s thinking
about the spin teacher with the nice breasts and burrow deeper.
The essential idea is this—someone will always bruise your grapes
and someone will end up in the middle. Someone you love will break
your favorite coffee mug and bring you lilacs. And you will be
connected to people who make your eyes roll. You’ll be connected
to others who stand on the bridge and consider jumping off. You’ll try
to care for them. And you will not look your age, but you will
feel sad when you look in the mirror because we all want to live
a little longer, because the dog will die and the cashier has lost his job
for stealing saltwater taffy from the bin, but he still calls you
darling, calls everyone darling, and today,
darling, darling, darling, the flashlight works.
MAGPIES RECOGNIZE THEMSELVES IN THE MIRROR
The evening sounds like a murder
of