I wanted to quit, and was too young to realize that I could just quit anything.

The trees all richly clad, yet devoid of pride, fat with birds and the season, have called back days and years for the history they are giving me. 

Signals

When dead whales wash up on your shores,
it's not your insult to heaven, nor your fifteen-

        foot song carried

                       by high tide into flushing

The parents come home tired, they come home smiling, they come home angry, they come home drunk.

soliciting chimps / in the shit cage

He can’t respond to the man addressing him as Mr. Sport because he can’t talk, his tongue has been mangled, somewhat ineptly, and he sees the hilarity in this, being tortured by inept torturers, as another larger silent gentleman’s behind him, but if it weren’t him in the chair, if it were someone else and he was watching, he might be amused by these two dilettantes practicing the art of torture.

& spread / my arms out / like a giant squid

The woman sat on the train wrapped tightly in her coat. She stared at herself in the window and eyed the other passengers.

My therapist’s name was Sean. I remember that most of all because it was easy for me to say. The sound sh never caused trouble. I could curse or tell people to shut up all day long. But es caused a world of trouble. 

When clearly it could be a mommy or even a child for that matter.

BESTIARY was released in October of 2016 by Graywolf Press and has garnered a great deal of praise, including being longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award in Poetry. Kelly was kind enough to answer a few of my questions via email regarding the notion of self in poetry, how trauma and grief can manifest in art, and how her critical work informs (or fails to inform) her poetry.

In memory, we wanted to repost this gem from 2014 by Amanda Goldblatt that used Mary Tyler Moore as a lens to become a "review of friendship."

Later that evening, when confronted about my absence, I told her that my grandfather said I looked sick and should go home. His senility always made him my reliable scapegoat.

Miracles come more seldom now.
It’s satellite interference.

In the far-flung depths of the future, historians
will look back to this day and say, "This
is where it all went wrong."

my brain is on fire
so i can tell by the colors
that winter is coming

My perverse compassion had destroyed all traces of a once-in-a-lifetime trip. 

A Tribe Called Quest
We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service
Released: November 11, 2016
Label: Epic Records
Length: 61 minutes, 16 songs

All of my favorite people are

She needs a quick blowout, so I comb and press her golden hair until is a sheer curtain fluttering around a face thrown open to love.