Divinations IV: Shells, Learning to Listen, & the Lyric You

“I don’t wanna be alone in my poems.”

Welcome back to our fourth episode of the Divinations miniseries, featuring an ongoing conversation in poems with poet Sandra Yannone.

In this episode, Sandy's shares her "Ecdysis Sonnet," inspired by my poem “Hereafter,” from Episode 3: Lakes, Cosmic Convergence, & the Scientific Sublime, as well as by the Little Oracles lexical fragment “shell.”

Ecdysis Sonnet
by Sandra Yannone | A work-in-progress poem

To chance a change of coastlines, you smuggle
every memory of both into corrugated boxes
that you suture with packing tape. They huddle
together over every terrain you cross. You are a fox

driving cross-country pretending you belong,
sly, wherever you stop. When you arrive at the coast
you traded up for, the sun is forever longing
to be your every meal, breakfast’s burnt toast,

lunch, and dinner. You are the sun’s constant snack.
You watch a woman on an overturned surfboard stare
for hours over the sand then sea, contemplating the backs
of waves from her grainy perch. She cares

only that the sun stays out late. She never
turns her head to look at you. She will never
dare to chance a change of coastlines. Never ever.

We talk about permission to stretch poetic forms, liminality and belonging, human statues, and more. Plus, I share an excerpt from my response poem to Sandy's featured reading. Find the full transcript here.

xx, aa