Kelli Russell Agodon

I Wonder If I Need the Rapture or If I Could Just
Swallow A Catastrophe and Call It Good


Find me at a party socializing with someone’s cat. 
Pull a decade from my dress and find what’s left
of the bliss sewn the hem.

In a perfect world, we would slow dance
with someone we love, we would hold childhood 
in our palm and call it a foal. 

What we love frolics with its mother, while we ache 
for our sins. Walk through a field without disturbing 
a spider’s web. Turn off the news

when a javelin is thrown through the screen 
into your heart. Yes, you are worried—fear 
has been our blanket for years. 

Yes, you are home alone so your mind
is cashing in every anxiety chip. Bet on less.
Forget the radishes at the store and be joyful 

that you did. There are too many false fangs
in the necks of the ones we love. Bite lighter.
Use your lips. Know the lightning 

you believed would kill you didn’t. Not every wolf 
harms, many just want to find their way 
back into the forests we keep cutting down. 

Kelli Russell Agodon’s newest book is Dialogues with Rising Tides from Copper Canyon Press. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and book cover designer. Her other books include Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, Hourglass Museum, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice (coauthored with Martha Silano), and Fire on Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. She lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional lands of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. Kelli is currently part of a project between local land trusts and artists to help raise awareness for the preservation of land, ecosystems, and biodiversity called Writing the Land. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com