LA Review

Just a note that my poem, "Discovering the Tasmanian Devil is My Life Coach" is in this new issue (Issue 6) of the LA Review

Here's the poem--

He wants me to speak without language.
What can you say in a facial expression?
Can you find contentment in chaos? Disruption?

All my life I’ve been told
to speak slowly, use manners.
He’d like me to slurp a hunk of meat

from my dinner plate, break the wine glass
and guzzle the bottle. He says I’m improving
on my spontaneity, but there’s room

to rip apart the wildflowers without feeling
guilty for what was. He says remember the time
your mother said, Young ladies don’t dress that way.

He tells me to spin naked through a continent
being only distracted with rabbits disguised
as the opposite sex. Try dressing as a tornado,

find passion in every twirl.
He tells me he knows it’s silly
to suggest I sleep on a full stomach

and destroy whatever gets in my path,
but he’s asked me to be an innocent savage,
be the person the room stops for.


- Kelli Russell Agodon
from the LA Review, Issue 6

It will also be Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room...


The guidelines to submit to issue 7 are here.