Download PDF Here 13th Anniversary
Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two December 2022.
Surrender, poems by Serena Agusto-Cox.
Surrender
I.
The dark sea rolls over you
pushes you down, down;
your arms windmill,
lungs bubble and burn with salt.
Where’s the hand, the arm to hold?
II.
We spiral through classrooms, halls
alphabet lines redden, as you lure
others with anger and hate.
We’re all drowning, holding hands, screaming.
You’re here, strapped with tentacles crushing your neck.
We’re little leaves ripped from branches
by torrents that pulled you down.
What I Learned From Shark Week
Sinews stretched under your steely skin,
gliding beneath the glassy surface. You gain speed,
waves undulating like four-chambered circuitry of birds.
Launching an arc above the sea — predatory need drives you —
allowing breath beneath dorsals. Breach of watery contract
as you fly — if only for seconds — like birds diving
just below the surface for fish.
Greatness is not the catch, but the act of leaping
to become weightless.
Air Weaving
Thin strands ripple,
crisscross, knot,
untangle, a groundswell.
Wind passing over and through
my hair. Quilts over my eyes.
Air weaving against the break inside,
swell in my breast, upsurge of emotion.
I want to close my eyes against the flood.
Roads fade into the wake —
a predictable drift,
as undertow threatens to pull me under.
© Serena Agusto-Cox
Serena Agusto-Cox, one of the first featured poets of the DiVerse Gaithersburg reading series in Maryland, coordinates poetry programming for the Gaithersburg Book Festival. Poems are in The Curator, Poetry X Hunger, and more. Work appears in the anthologies, The Great World of Days, This Is What America Looks Like, Mom Egg Review’s Pandemic Parenting, The Plague Papers, H.L. Hix’s Made Priceless, Love_Is_Love: An Anthology for LGBTQIA+ Teens. She also runs the book review blog, Savvy Verse & Wit, and founded Poetic Book Tours to help poets market their books.