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    Two of Everything: Poems
    Two of Everything: Poems
    Two of Everything: Poems
    Ebook91 pages39 minutes

    Two of Everything: Poems

    By Sally Keith

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    About this ebook

    An abundant and anticipatory collection of poems exploring the season of waiting that precedes adoption.

    From Guggenheim fellow and celebrated author Sally Keith comes an incantatory collection of poems on the transformative process of nurturing new life and the practical challenges of starting a family.

    In Two of Everything, Keith depicts an evocative domestic landscape. An oriole weaves a nest of “straw, wool, horsehair, and feather” while hopeful parents meet with social workers, compile family videos, write, sketch. Intertwined with these scenes is a candid navigation of the US adoption industry and the unique obstacles faced by queer couples. “I want Amor to promise me that everything will be alright,” says the speaker-poet. “But she won’t.” Interviews don’t go as expected, mothers withdraw from adoption conversations, “the bees are dying again.” Torn by feelings of shame for participating in a system that commodifies children, Keith’s speaker-poet finds herself caught between longing and dismay, wondering if and how poetry can carry us through such moments—and through the mysteries of existence.   

    But despite their difficult subject matter, these resilient poems sing with love. Singularly thoughtful and characterized by Keith’s lush lyricism, this collection demonstrates the tenacity and tenderness needed to build “harbor, shelter, home, house” against all odds.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMilkweed Editions
    Release dateAug 6, 2024
    ISBN9781571311535
    Two of Everything: Poems
    Author

    Sally Keith

    Sally Keith is the author of Two of Everything, as well as four previous collections of poetry, including River House and The Fact of the Matter. Recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2016, she is a member of the MFA faculty at George Mason University and lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

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      Book preview

      Two of Everything - Sally Keith

      What If

      Sometimes Amor and I feel like we live on a river

      other times we feel stuck.

      We have hazy ideas about what we want

      and go for long walks by night.

      The size of the trees in the neighborhood,

      back behind our building, behind the wide avenue

      mostly willow oak and maple

      make us think of ourselves outside of time.

      The lights from the houses and the lights from the streetlamps

      do not interrupt the shadows, no,

      it happens naturally

      that darkness shifts.

      *

      When Night spoke

      it said, listen

      listen, there is nothing

      that will not end—

      *

      At a certain point Amor says, "You have not written a poem

      since we’ve been together"

      which is not entirely true

      but neither is it false enough.

      Amor, a lover of podcasts,

      a lover of stories

      occasionally she sits down to supper and sighs.

      She thinks I should write more openly about my life.

      *

      I don’t want to feel out of shape.

      I don’t want to make rules about when I drink.

      I don’t want to cook anything else.

      I did want to see the Vermeer, though we did not.

      I wanted to see the Vermeer, but not to imagine

      making all that light from the dark.

      *

      At the top of the stairs in the house. In the house where I grew up

      and again that night slept. She stands. She who cannot go up

      or down, not anymore. She has a halo and why would she not?

      It’s not a halo. It’s a feeling that cannot fade. It feels like terror.

      It feels like love. I think of her nightgown glowing at the edges

      as if there were no body inside. But her body is not gone,

      not yet. I have never seen a ghost, except

      those I have felt inside my dreams

      dropping necklaces down lightly onto my neck, touching

      the small of my back with a hand. Like that, yes.

      Whisper something

      I’m listening.

      *

      Down the street

      a man rolls a mattress

      out the front door of his house.

      The bushes have grown so thick

      that once he turns the corner

      you have no idea

      what will happen next.

      *

      On some of the nights

      it sounded like poems

      inside of what later

      I would understand

      as the hypnagogic state.

      I rode up roads as steep

      as my own flexed feet—

      whether or not the shortcut

      worked, I woke. Waking I

      kept hearing one thing

      inside of the other.

      *

      And night says, no.

      It’s been ten years

      it’s been twenty.

      It’s been five days, no,

      it’s been many.

      *

      Oh, I thought you were the philosopher, I say,

      disappointed,

      when Amor comes to bed

      after working late.

      *

      Evidence, the judge explains, is what can be seen. You cannot say for sure if the man had a knife or not; the knife is not evidence. The case involved an armed robbery near a convenience store to the east of where we lived. Most of the transaction had been recorded by a camera on a lamppost above a four-way stop.

      *

      Unseen instances saturate a single life.

      *

      This moss is not the moss

      of childhood

      when we sat beside the pond

      for picnics

      the pond forgotten

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