High Lonesome

By Allison Titus

High Lonesome is a radio left on in a candlelit room, playing softly into the shadows as the hours fall through the evening. Interruptions of static, a slow confetti of grief drifting into the corners, mysterious white noise dispatches. Here is a meditation on estrangement— from an other, from the world, from the self— and its long aftermath spent learning how to cultivate tenderness and devotion in a world “ where nobody / is tender enough,” a practice that alternates between sorrow and transcendence. These poems are little ceremonies of attention to a variety of lonelinesses, both human and non-human. Strange, lyrical and funny, the third collection of poems by Allison Titus simultaneously reckons with and marvels at “ the luminously borrowed / experiment that living is” in a world that feels terrible and hopeful, beautiful and precarious.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saturnalia Books
• Release date: Oct 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781947817579

Book preview

IT WILL ALL WORK OUT OKAY

Once I hiked partway up a glacieron the other side of a dust storm

just north of Vikfar off

I could see the sandy fields & the shaggy horses

that roamed themcould see the seams of their breath lifting

little signals into the weep of it allI was someone else

back thensomeone maybe not even lonelyBack then

I stood for a long timebefore the waterfall that broadcast

its white in a rush of laceThe tour group was full

of complaintsaround the next scheduled departure

At the Blue LagoonI watched strangers

at a bachelorette party take shotsof vodka from tiny plastic cups

& toast the bride-to-be in her white bikini

Just like anywhereor the moon

& back thenI was full of my own brand of laziness & shorthand

desireto get close to somethinglife-changing & majestic

without working very hard for itEverywhere

I looked something was coming alivein dramatic fashion

a glimmer in the acheof the cape of ice that glazed everything over

those months of little daylightthe dusk kept folding

its lava fields intoa syntax

of eveningIt was beautifulIt made me

smaller

I HAVE TOO MANY TABS OPEN ON MY LAPTOP & THE WORLD IS ENDING

& nothing feels good. End of summer

in America, it’s been a terrible year.

Bought a cheap crop top in the wake

of my loss, because what does the body

have to do with grief? Everything.

Everything. I lose & lose myself hourly.

To be honest I bought two crop tops

online then took a long walk

to the cemetery at golden hour,

the orange sci-fi sun brimming all over

the place. To be honest I walked to the

cemetery at the golden hour so I’d have

an excuse to text the famous artist

the luminous yet pixelated

cemetery when I got back home.

Have I always been so tedious?

The answer is yes & of course I have.

Still, what matters is I’m there when

the light floats the gravestones

off into the softer expanse, all our facts

turned into shadows stacked on the hillside.

When the sky turns a chandelier

of haze over this prime daypart,

when families settle to dinner

in front of their giant TVs,

when the field sets to glow despite

how rutted & windswept. Even at

its most mundane, look how easy

this world can bring me to my knees.

TOURIST POEM

Clutched by peach-colored carpet

& stained from who knows what at

the edges, America’s Best Value Inn

with its YELP two-star average

is a nowhere place tourists come

to practice their longing in neon

windbreakers & peering over the edge

of some deep gorge, slots like red mouths

wide open. A gape of dusk settles

its bet over the desert in the dead

of winter until even this place feels

like so many others. This barren subtropic

situation looks like