Reading Russell Atkins on Election Day

The whole nation’s brac’d for everything
following today into January. Atkins writes
when one is kept like a clock’s guts wound up
…kernal’d anger! / —that’s anger’s fuller bad really,
how my country feels.

The Times says 350 Nordstrom stores’ve
bought plywood to board up and stop
such anger’s glass shatter. it’s good, then, to know
the phone’s number of some befriendful one
…tell all / tell till the air fills to told

and he’s right: I want to call my BFF
in Cleveland, waiting her son’s release
from prison—my cousin in Germany, my
former students in Managua under
hurricane watch.

I wish my country
had someone to call—England, Mexico,
France, or, oh, Canada—but those friendships,
like half-demolished neighborhoods
line up on hold till our rehabilitation.

—Diane Kendig

Seed: “kept like a clock’s guts wound up…kernal’d anger! / —that’s anger’s fuller bad really,” and “it’s good, then, to know the phone’s number of some befriendful one…tell all / tell till the air fills to told”

Source: “(Impromptu on “Oft-Thought"),” from World’d Too Much: The Selected Poetry of Russell Atkins

Diane Kendig’s five poetry collections include Prison Terms, and she co-edited the anthology In the Company of Russell Atkins. She has published poetry and prose in journals such as J Journal, Under the Sun, and Ekphrasis. She curates “Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry,” now with over 4000 subscribers. Diane encourages you to read the Poetry Foundation biography for Russell Atkins.