make beautiful things

                      he says this
                      when I’m cranky

in the middle of predicting my life
I realized the future isn’t what it used to be

don’t worry
everything’s going to be Bora Bora

                        I stick a bandaid to my heart
                        to keep the joy
                        from bleeding out

                        I make corpse revivers
                        for friends who stayed too late

at the end of the day we can endure
much more than we think we can

                         this is what my tattoo said before
                         it vanished

                         this is what Frida says
                         each time she visits in my dreams

—

This selection comes from Kelli Russell Agodon’s book of poetry Houseglass Museum, available from White Pine Press. Purchase your copy here!

Kelli Russell Agodon is an award-winning poet, writer, and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent collection is Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014) and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her second collection, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room was chosen by Carl Dennis for the winner of the White Pine Press Book Prize, and was also the Winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year in Poetry as well as a Finalist for the Washington State Book Prize. Her other books include Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Kelli was born and raised in Seattle and educated at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop where she received her MFA in creative writing.  Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and is a Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Retreat for Women Poets. She lives in a small seaside town where she is an avid paddleboarder, mountain biker, and hiker who has a fondness for writing letters, desserts, and fedoras. www.agodon.com.

Emily Capettini is a fiction writer originally from Batavia, IL. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and her fiction has appeared in places like Noctua Review and Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her critical work can be found in Feminisms in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman: Essays on the Comics, Poetry and Prose (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012) and is upcoming in Neil Gaiman in the Twenty-First Century(McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015). She currently lives in Maryland.

Distant Horizons

1

Early morning and I find beauty
in imperfection. Rain. Fog.

Too tired to sleep, I become a wanderlust
in cardboard shoes.

2

Success: its usefulness is overrated.

3

A friend comes over with a Ouija board.
It spells out: Bourbon. Where’ s the band?

Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t
have fun.

4

Poem: a form of negotiation for what haunts us.

5

There’s a ghost in my home,
but we’ve named her Tilde
as punctuation can’t hurt us.

6

Sometimes I slip on the wet chattermarks
during a long walk where I’m lost
in my head and I find myself
pleasurably disoriented.
This happens in poetry too.

7

Keep the faith and trust in so far as possible.

8

When the wind pushes clouds
out of the sky’s solo, I realize I’m spellbound
watching the evergreens in my yard
lean backwards, a jazz quartet.

9

We learn how not to break, but bend gently.

—

This selection comes from Kelli Russell Agodon’s book of poetry Houseglass Museum, available from White Pine Press. Purchase your copy here!

Kelli Russell Agodon is an award-winning poet, writer, and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent collection is Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014) and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her second collection, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room was chosen by Carl Dennis for the winner of the White Pine Press Book Prize, and was also the Winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year in Poetry as well as a Finalist for the Washington State Book Prize. Her other books include Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Kelli was born and raised in Seattle and educated at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop where she received her MFA in creative writing.  Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and is a Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Retreat for Women Poets. She lives in a small seaside town where she is an avid paddleboarder, mountain biker, and hiker who has a fondness for writing letters, desserts, and fedoras. www.agodon.com.

Emily Capettini is a fiction writer originally from Batavia, IL. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and her fiction has appeared in places like Noctua Review and Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her critical work can be found in Feminisms in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman: Essays on the Comics, Poetry and Prose (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012) and is upcoming in Neil Gaiman in the Twenty-First Century(McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015). She currently lives in Maryland.

Drowning Girl: A Waterlogged Ars Poetica

                                    I don’t care! I’d rather sink—than call Brad for help!
                                    from a Roy Lichtenstein painting

As I go under, I wonder if there’s a reason for art?
For poems and taffeta dresses I haven’t worn in years.

I don’t have time to fall inward
or to spend the day obsessing
about how I haven’t written anything
of substance.

I’m floating in the sea, watching killjoys,
I mean, killdeer, run across my shore.

Call it lack. Call it stuck in the muck
of creative debauchery.

There’s no dessert in the picnic basket,
so I swallow time. My mouth is full
of hands and numbers. I ask for seconds.

I eat from everyone’s plates, drink enough
of the red sea to take me under.

I am gluttony with a wristwatch,
hectic in my need to get what I can.

The killjoy sings:
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.

I dream of typewriters, marble
sculptures—all things that sink.

Cormorants dive like falling ampersands,
killdeer become small commas in the sand.

Nightingales fly from closets
of clouds, from white taffeta dresses
hanging from sky.

I have to make a choice:
reach for them on or let them pass.

—

This selection comes from Kelli Russell Agodon’s book of poetry Houseglass Museum, available from White Pine Press. Purchase your copy here!

Kelli Russell Agodon is an award-winning poet, writer, and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent collection is Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014) and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her second collection, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room was chosen by Carl Dennis for the winner of the White Pine Press Book Prize, and was also the Winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year in Poetry as well as a Finalist for the Washington State Book Prize. Her other books include Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Kelli was born and raised in Seattle and educated at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop where she received her MFA in creative writing.  Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and is a Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Retreat for Women Poets. She lives in a small seaside town where she is an avid paddleboarder, mountain biker, and hiker who has a fondness for writing letters, desserts, and fedoras. www.agodon.com.

Emily Capettini is a fiction writer originally from Batavia, IL. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and her fiction has appeared in places like Noctua Review and Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her critical work can be found in Feminisms in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman: Essays on the Comics, Poetry and Prose (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012) and is upcoming in Neil Gaiman in the Twenty-First Century(McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015). She currently lives in Maryland.

Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea

Listen, love—the cliffs are tired
of restraining us, tired of the questions
we ask each other about time. But
we’ve forgotten our schedules tonight
we find the luxury in the silk pillow-
case, camisole, the petal wings of moths fluttering at the window. We lie
together in a bed of beach music
above a small village of fishermen,
of ferries and pathways.
When they lower the boats, the sea
swallows hard and we slip beneath a blue
brushstroke not knowing who will stay under
and who will make it back to shore.

—

This selection comes from Kelli Russell Agodon’s book of poetry Houseglass Museum, available from White Pine Press. Purchase your copy here!

Kelli Russell Agodon is an award-winning poet, writer, and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent collection is Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014) and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her second collection, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room was chosen by Carl Dennis for the winner of the White Pine Press Book Prize, and was also the Winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year in Poetry as well as a Finalist for the Washington State Book Prize. Her other books include Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Kelli was born and raised in Seattle and educated at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop where she received her MFA in creative writing.  Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and is a Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Retreat for Women Poets. She lives in a small seaside town where she is an avid paddleboarder, mountain biker, and hiker who has a fondness for writing letters, desserts, and fedoras. www.agodon.com.

Emily Capettini is a fiction writer originally from Batavia, IL. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and her fiction has appeared in places like Noctua Review and Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her critical work can be found in Feminisms in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman: Essays on the Comics, Poetry and Prose (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012) and is upcoming in Neil Gaiman in the Twenty-First Century(McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015). She currently lives in Maryland.

Dear Serious Museum Patrons

The Exhibition of the Universe has opened.

We understand meteors and memos
are not uncommon in your life,

but the opening of this exhibit
should not concern your comets or corsets,
your shooting standards, your To Do lithium.

Dear Friends of the Hourglass,
the Guidebook to Escaping, Friends

of the Beetle Wing Blessing or those who live
an Eventful Existence in Turbulent Times.

Dear Friends of the Briefcase,
the Wall Street Darlings in Bowties,

the Buzz Hungry. Dear Friends
of the Doohickey and Thingamajigs,

Friends Suffering with Stendhal Syndrome,
dizzy and fainting from so much art.

Dear Friends of the We-Waited-Four-Years-
For-The-Sequel, Friends who hold Roman candles
and those who sprint to a secure location.

Dear Friends of the Hectic Household,
who took their iPhones camping and found them

covered in dew, For-A-Midlife-Crisis-
Dial-1-800-POEM, Friends with an Art-Saves-

Lives bumpersticker on your Prius
and those who equate watercolor with sadness.

Friends, slapdash or somber, lucky and lucid
dreaming, we want to thank you for holding time’s
arrow and setting down your serious schedule

to look up and see the madness
organized in the stars.

—

This selection comes from Kelli Russell Agodon’s book of poetry Houseglass Museum, available from White Pine Press. Purchase your copy here!

Kelli Russell Agodon is an award-winning poet, writer, and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent collection is Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014) and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her second collection, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room was chosen by Carl Dennis for the winner of the White Pine Press Book Prize, and was also the Winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year in Poetry as well as a Finalist for the Washington State Book Prize. Her other books include Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Kelli was born and raised in Seattle and educated at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop where she received her MFA in creative writing.  Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and is a Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Retreat for Women Poets. She lives in a small seaside town where she is an avid paddleboarder, mountain biker, and hiker who has a fondness for writing letters, desserts, and fedoras. www.agodon.com.

Emily Capettini is a fiction writer originally from Batavia, IL. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and her fiction has appeared in places like Noctua Review and Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her critical work can be found in Feminisms in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman: Essays on the Comics, Poetry and Prose (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012) and is upcoming in Neil Gaiman in the Twenty-First Century(McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015). She currently lives in Maryland.