ISSUE ONE: "On the Charm Bracelet of Life, Dying Is the Shape of Driftwood" by Kelli Russell Agodon
On the Charm Bracelet of Life,
Dying Is the Shape of Driftwood
Because prayer is not a lifeguard
and the waves keep lapping over the rocks,
all the flowers are salty and wilting
in the summer sun. How do you spell
drowning? Depending on your height,
it’s the size of the ocean you stand in.
That summer was more than a puddle.
That fall, a sea pulling me down. The man
who held my hipbone and pulled me under
could have been eel grass, could have been
a hungry shark, a riptide, could have been
what lurks beneath deep waters and swims
near us when we think we’re alone.
Because prayer is flotation device, I kept talking
to god. I sacrificed my body because
that’s what anxiety does—Lent as starvation:
what won’t kill you but make you thinner.
Better to be a gull, ready to break open
whatever you need. Better to be a wave,
taking the space it wants.
But sometimes you live part of your life
as the driftwood, you wonder if you’re floating,
you wonder if you’re already gone.
Kelli Russell Agodon
Kelli Russell Agodon is a poet, writer, editor, book designer, and co-founder of Two Sylvias Press, living in the Seattle area. Her collection of poems Hourglass Museum was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and was shortlisted for the Julie Suk Award honoring the best book of poems published by a small press. She is also author of the bestselling The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, which she co-authored with Martha Silano. She was the winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award in poetry, and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, New England Review, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She is a co-director of Poets on the Coast, a writing retreat for women.
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