Candice M. Kelsey
To My Step Father-in-Law
Who said there was demon energy in my house that he’d read about it in World Magazine who said reading Harry Potter to my daughter opened the door for Satan which is why bad things were happening / like the wind-slam window shredding my finger to the bone like my son’s hamster biting bacteria into my blood like my torn meniscus from standing after folding laundry like my spontaneous coronary artery dissection / to that step father-in-law who taught his Ph.D. wife to be more agreeable and speak when spoken to and always respond Sure! With a smile to whatever cockamamie idea he proposed / to the step father-in-law who claimed my anxiety and depression were not symptoms of an overwhelmed and under supported mother of three teaching all day and tutoring all night to make ends meet but rather the symptoms of an ungrateful heart / to this step father-in-law whose solution to demon energy was submission to the headship of my husband / to you step-father-in-law for your idea of a portable mini-dishwasher to shut me up / oh step-father-in-law who promised we would be set for life when you were gone—did you really leave us only a shoebox of Iraqi Dinars obsolete and valued at .00076 of the U.S. Dollar / and to my mother-in-law who went before him—did you smile and say Sure! When he wrote that into your wills?
Education
Two women worked side by side to build a new school. One was much younger. They respected each other’s talents for curriculum and instruction. Many years later and the school flourished. What a success everyone remarked.
When the younger woman dropped dead from a spontaneous coronary artery dissection, the older woman began writing with her other hand and drank long into the night. She stopped going to church and often fell asleep at her desk while teaching. She had grown unnaturally weak.
The woman’s friends approached the out-of-work-actor that lived in the apartments across the street from the school. They were desperate. He said he knew what the problem was. She is carrying the spirit of her dead colleague within her.
The out-of-work-actor told the woman’s friends he could perform magic to release the dead colleague’s spirit, but that it would be dangerous. They insisted it was worth the risk to help their friend get back to teaching her students. It happened in the Rite-Aid parking lot, but the living teacher could not tolerate being separated from her dead colleague, and she too died.
No, that’s not what happened. Actually, no one even noticed
the younger teacher had died, and the older colleague—even the entire school—forgot all about her.
Cool
I used to think my oldest brother
was the epitome of it
in his hush puppies and tweed
jacket taking D____ to Homecoming,
real life prince and princess.
Until he left for college
and I took his room for the waterbed,
removing Farrah Fawcett
Adrienne Barbeau and Cheryl Tiegs
from his walls. I used
his electric guitar and amp
to catch sports bra and fuchsia leggings.
Then I took my rightful seat as man
of the suburban house atop
the stairs and to the left
of the laundry chute, at his desk
with a map of the world under its glass.
For once I was cool,
staring at the USSR imagining ICBMs
pointed at America, unbudging
and ready. But how could I feel safe
up against something so huge?
Opening his sock drawer,
I found a deck of playing cards:
52 Vintage Nudes and Pin-Ups
in full color sleep and forever horny
between the sheets
of my brother’s tubes and argyles.
Could he be uncool?
Like today when we rarely text
updates about our kids,
he keeps it brief and impersonal.
Detached like he’s locked
inside his childhood room
with posters and cards and I’m two
doors down wondering what magic
occurs behind the door. Today
I text my poetry chapbook has released
and he plays his one deft card
from that old standby pack—Cool.
Back in Los Angeles
a male colleague confesses
he walked out
of the Barbie movie incensed
at how boys were
portrayed claiming the scene
where a guy slaps
Barbie’s ass is unrealistic
he tells us in the faculty lounge
that never happens
and I ask him why I have a decade’s
worth of therapy bills
so later I binge
videos of post-menopausal orcas
protecting their sons and
a 60 Minutes segment
on the British zoologist Lucy Cooke
whose work with sloths
reminds me Darwin was a Victorian
man branding the female
species as a feminine
footnote to the masculine main event
oh how I want to see a man
call the female spotted hyena
passive coy and chaste
see her laugh
in his face after she’s bitten it off
Fitness Journal
To be recorded in the Literary Present Tense.
And MLA format (Motivated, Lively, Active).
1. Warm Up: Skip Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises to avoid the burn of machismo in your lungs. Recite Angelou’s “Still I Rise.” Then read Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to feel the gentle, aimless prose of your breath.
2. Core: Complete six reps of three Cassandra curl sit ups in dactylic hexameter, or Heroic Meter. You never know when you’ll need to string a bow.
3. Legs: Using old wine barrels from Saint Antoine, do fourteen squats in honor of Bastille Day, for 1:05 seconds to honor Dr. Manette’s North Tower identity. Do not drop the wine barrels in the street!
4. Shoulders: Place a 5lb. bag of Nigerian yams on the table and with a 10lb. machete slice them. Honor your ancestors and demonstrate your strength. You do not want to be known for the weakness of your machete.
5. Mind: Read “Two Lorries” by Seamus Heaney, “Sestina,” by Elizabeth Bishop, and “Sestina of the Tramp-Royal,” by Rudyard Kipling. Then, select six random words to write six six-line stanzas ending with each. For the final sprint, give it all you’ve got in the envoi. And if that doesn’t fatigue your mind, try doing it in dactylic hexameter.
When finished, take your journal to the nearest boulder, oak, or field. Reflect.
Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a writer and educator living in Los Angeles and Georgia. Often anchored in the seemingly quotidian, her work explores the intersections of place, body, and belonging; she has been featured in SWWIM, The Laurel Review, Poet Lore, Passengers Journal, and About Place among others. Candice mentors an incarcerated writer through PEN America and reads for The Los Angeles Review. Her comfort-character is Jessica Fletcher. Please find her @Feed_Me_Poetry and https://www.candicemkelseypoet.com/.
Featured photo by Rene Terp (Pexels)
