Kelli Russell Agodon
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kelliagodon.bsky.social
Kelli Russell Agodon
@kelliagodon.bsky.social
2.9K followers 340 following 150 posts
(she/her) Poet. Editor. Paddleboarder. Easygoing Capricorn. Next book: Accidental Devotions (Copper Canyon Press, 2026)! Co-host of "Poems You Need" with Melissa Studdard. Faculty at Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.🏳️‍🌈Bi/Queer
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kelliagodon.bsky.social
"her memory is a cloud she can't hold..."

Lots of feels with this poem for my mum. Sent with love for anyone with a parent or loved one with Alzheimer's/dementia. It's a journey.

(And thank you @poetsorg.bsky.social and Rick Barot for sharing this one. It means a lot.)
October 7, 2025 at 5:22 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
My gawd I love this poem:

"When you place a wet kiss on my nape while washing my back in the shower, I think of all good things and forget I am wounded. "

~ T. De Los Reyes @andhow.bsky.social
waxwingmag.org/items/issue3...
September 9, 2025 at 2:45 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
This happened to me last night in bed--I had 2 lines to a new poem. . .and I didn't write them down. (And they are now "dust") :-/

#LivingPoetsSociety #ShareLivingPoets
September 7, 2025 at 4:58 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
"Sometimes you don't want to love the person you love. . ."

Dang, sometimes I catch myself doing this too--protecting myself from the tenderness I actually crave.

~ Grace Paley's "Anti-Love Poem"
Anti-Love Poem by Grace Paley Sometimes you don’t want to love the person you love you turn your face away from that face whose eyes lips might make you give up anger forget insult steal sadness of not wanting to love turn away then turn away at breakfast in the evening don’t lift your eyes from the paper to see that face in all its seriousness a sweetness of concentration he holds his book in his hand the hard-knuckled winter wood- scarred fingers turn away that’s all you can do old as you are to save yourself from love
September 7, 2025 at 3:55 AM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
Hi Poets, Writers, Creatives, & Artists—

If you follow me here, I promise not to post about DT, EM, and the chaos of the new administration. You can find your news elsewhere—I want to create a safer space on your feed for poems, art, and joy.

Anyone else in?
#BlueSkyPromise #lovebeforehate
Photo of the tip of Kelli's paddleboarding paddling into the sunrise in the PacNW
January 21, 2025 at 3:23 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
I forget @bsky.app exists but I like it here and adopted a kitten. Follow me for more life hacks. 🐈‍⬛
January 9, 2025 at 5:47 AM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
I found this “inspirational” embroidery my kid made me. Tell me you’re the child of a poet without telling me you’re a child of a poet.
January 9, 2025 at 4:15 AM
kelliagodon.bsky.social

"I began writing this poem about my own creative journey, and how long it’s taken me to stop holding back...fires in life can be great motivators for finding and freeing our own voices in the world. Now is not the time to hold back anymore. Now is the time to tell our stories."

~James Crews
December 3, 2024 at 6:12 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
"Most Days I Want to Live" #poetry
by Gabrielle Carvocoressi
Most Days I Want to Live by Gabrielle Calvocoressi Not all days. But most days I do. Most days the garden’s almost enough: little pink flowers on the sage, even though the man said we couldn’t eat it. Not this kind. And I said, Then, gosh. What’s the point? The flowers themselves, I suppose. The rain came and then the hail came and my love brought them in. Even tipped over they look optimistic. I know it’s too late to envy the flowers. That century’s over and done. And hope? That’s a jinx. But I did set them right. I patted them a little. And prayed for myself, which is embarrassing to admit in this day and age. But I did it. Because no one was looking or listening anyway.
December 2, 2024 at 6:20 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
“We try to fool the gods by buying
the latest iPhone, sealcoating our driveway.”

“Less”
December 1, 2024 at 5:44 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
"Write into the person practicing scales but practicing them out of order. Write into the honey."

Rick Barot in Waxwing Magazine
waxwingmag.org/items/issue3...
After Amina Rick Barot   Write into the smudge in the painting where the pink lays into the green. Write into the plush of his lower lip. Write into the light pouring from the oculus above the baroque courtyard.  Write into the whippoorwill that sings each morning, bringing in the morning. The two old balloons caught in the branch outside the fourth-floor window. The sky and its gray flannel suit. Write into the person practicing scales but practicing them out of order. Write into the honey.  The story he told about the hierarchies of honeybees.  The story he told about the man mummified in honey. Write into his white hands.  Write into the smell of pomade.  Write into the smell of August, a thug of a smell. Write into each trivial but astonishing trick,  like roller-skating backwards or snipping thread with your teeth. Write into the rain. Write into its fall, knowing that the only god you can know is gravity.
November 30, 2024 at 7:18 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social

from Brenda Hillman from ::[in a place with no light]::
All this life there you are trapped in yourself surely. you can forgive a few more people By Brenda Hillman
November 30, 2024 at 7:02 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
"Why write love poetry in a burning world?"
--Katie Farris
Today's poem is by Katie Farris Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World To train myself to find, in the midst of hell what isn't hell. The body, bald, cancerous, but still beautiful enough to imagine living the body washing the body replacing a loose front porch step the body chewing what it takes to keep a body going— This scene has a tune a language I can read a door I cannot close I stand within its wedge a shield. Why write love poetry in a burning world? To train myself, in the midst of a burning world to offer poems of love to a burning world.
November 30, 2024 at 2:50 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
"kindness in poetry is an act of rebellion" -- I stumbled about these words I said to @onlypoemsmag.bsky.social in an interview pre-election. It's funny your own word speak to you...
November 30, 2024 at 2:46 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
I forgot how much I love this poem by Ada Limón...
WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE was how horses simply give birth to other horses. Not a baby by any means, not a creature of liminal spaces, but already a four-legged beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after the mother. A horse gives way to another horse and then suddenly there are two horses, just like that. That’s how I loved you. You, off the long train from Red Bank carrying a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two computers swinging in it unwieldily at your side. I remember we broke into laughter when we saw each other. What was between us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed over. It came out fully formed, ready to run. Ada Limón
November 29, 2024 at 10:44 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
They also have the coolest Tote backpacks! It's tote bag, it's a backpack--stop, you're both right! open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/ob-...
November 29, 2024 at 10:37 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
Whenever I feel overwhelmed by family, I try to remember this:
Today's poem is by Kelli Russell Agodon The Hum of the Living Tonight, what haunts me is remembering the Helpful Instructions for the Dying pamphlet the hospice worker gave me. It's subtle but it's not, like finding a pocketknife in your favorite birch, like the last bedroom she wandered in, she wondered in, her last inhale. When the hospice worker said, Listen to a song that gives you hope, I said it's the hum of the living, the sound of dishes being set in the kitchen sink, they remind me—life is here. All those years of wishing for quiet, for calmness, for less clutter— protect the chaos with your life.
November 28, 2024 at 6:44 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
My Thanksgiving story--reminding me there are still good humans in the world making this place better:
This year, I’m hosting Thanksgiving, but the past two months have been a lot. I’ve been so emotionally tired and down that I decided to order from a local (and admittedly pricey) restaurant—just trying to give myself a break. Today, we picked up the food and found out someone had already paid for my order. I’ve been struggling with gratitude lately, and everything has felt a little harder than it should—but this act of kindness, this moment of unexpected generosity, reminded me that good still exists in the world. To the stranger/friend who did this: you gave us more than a meal, you gave me a little hope... Thank you to all who continue to try to make the world a better place despite it all. xo ❤
November 27, 2024 at 8:56 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
"Joy is not made to be a crumb."
~ Mary Oliver #poetry
Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
November 27, 2024 at 7:05 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
#ProTip: Sharing a poem? If it’s short enough, take a screenshot and post it with the link in the comments. People often scroll past links, but many times will stop to read the poem.
Insert Poem Here
November 27, 2024 at 3:51 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
A deceptively simple poem. I just keep rereading the last two couplets and thinking how we chain up so much of us that is wild.

From Carrie Fountain's INSTANT WINNER.
Prayer (WILD) A bunch of ducks out there on the lake flaunting their indifference to the choppy water, to this life and the next, rocking woodenly, tooth- white beaks, black eyes. Why do these ducks make my soul go nuts inside the responsibility of my body, throwing itself at the beauty of the world like a wild dog someone found in the words and took home and fell in love with and chained to the porch? by Carrie Fountain.
November 27, 2024 at 1:58 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
A favorite morning love poem by @taraskurtu.bsky.social
November 26, 2024 at 3:15 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
Exactly.

by Peggy Shumaker
Clitoris by Peggy Shumaker Surely a man named it. If a woman had chosen, we'd have hawk tongue, pearl of flame, olala berry, suck nubbin, jujube tsunami.
November 25, 2024 at 3:58 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
One of my very favorite poems to share. I hope that some of you are reading this for the first time. #poetry
November 24, 2024 at 10:57 PM
kelliagodon.bsky.social
"Why does it
matter now—what gun, what type."

~ John James
The Milk Hours by John James for J.E.J., 1962-1993 and C.S.M.J., 2013- We lived overlooking the walls overlooking the cemetery. The cemetery is where my father remains. We walked in the garden for what seemed like an hour but in reality must have been days. Cattail, heartseed—these words mean nothing to me. The room opens up into white and more white, sun outside between steeples. I remember, now, the milk hours, leaning over my daughter’s crib, dropping her ten, twelve pounds into the limp arms of her mother. The suckling sound as I crashed into sleep. My daughter, my father—his son. The wet grass dew-speckled above him. His face grows vague and then vaguer. From our porch I watch snow fall on bare firs. Why does it matter now—what gun, what type. Bluesmoke rises. The chopped copses glisten. Snowmelt smoothes the stone cuts of his name. This poem first appeared in The Louisville Review.
November 23, 2024 at 7:44 PM