Donika Kelly QUOTES

1 " You bear a sword and shield, remind me
of her labor, her stoning gaze. What beast

will your blade free next? What call will you loose
from another woman's throat? "

― Donika Kelly , Bestiary: Poems

3 " What the tongue wants.
Supplication and the burn
of crystals expanding.

To be, always, a waxing,
a waning, and, in waxing
again, not ever the same.

Waste and deferral.
Accumulation and deferral.
You are flesh,

and you are water,
though of the flesh,
you are only muscle,

and of the water,
you are saltless and clean.
Be a caution, a reckoning,

be a thing that breaks
before it bends. "

― Donika Kelly , Bestiary: Poems

5 " You grow. You are large.
You are a 19th century poem.
All of America is inside you,
a catalogue of lives and land
and burrowing things.
-From "Catalogue "

― Donika Kelly , Bestiary: Poems

7 " The man feels his chest. Am I a ghost?
His lungs reply: You are the bravest stone. "

― Donika Kelly , Bestiary: Poems

9 " When did one season begin and another end? What branched like a nerve? "

― Donika Kelly , Bestiary: Poems

11 " What is the metaphor
for two animals
sharing the same space?

Marriage?

We share a practice,
you and I,
a series of postures. "

― Donika Kelly