Ekphrastic, On Anxiety, My Golden-Caped Lover
while viewing Klimt’s “The Kiss”
If art is a line around our thoughts as Gustav Klimt declared,
Then what does that mean for my depression & anxiety
Which are nothing if not a heap, or a thrust, of lines?
Can I knot them, sever them, belay or splice them—
Are they coiled too tightly? If art can be a simple geometric
Concept, I wonder what that means for mental health.
Do its lines hug like a Mobius strip, or twist its neck around
A galvanized dock cleat, or string the eaves like holiday lights?
When the glow on the lake signals the sun to call it a day,
Can we motor in toward the dock & toss its lines over
Like C.K. Williams tossed his lines across the page, tongue
Like the lovers in Klimt’s golden mosaic? Self-negativity
& intrusive thoughts like recurring motifs, geometric,
Our consciousness is an obscene embrace called poetry.
For My Daughter on Her 21st Birthday
November 2023
It’s a girl! She’s six pounds
and six ounces measuring nineteen
inches with blood-red lips
her eyes full of hope for the world
Four months after you were born
to our shock and awe
Baghdad fell from a U.S. bombing
campaign and you took
my nipple as Saddam Hussein’s
Ba’athist regime toppled
We are ready to sacrifice our souls
so as not to give up Iraq
we say this so no one will think
America is capable of breaking Iraqis
The month you were conceived
President Bush
declared Iraq one part of
the Evil Axis as our bodies
created yours and war
prepared a million fatalities
America will not permit the world's
most dangerous regimes
to threaten us with the world's
most destructive weapons
Two years into college
you found your voice and quit
the track team knowing it was time
to become authentic
you shocked your father
but I was in awe
She is beautiful, she is small
She don't wanna play basketball
But there's no tellin' what she might do
Georgia Rae sings John Hiatt
A year before we married
in shock and awe
your father and I stood
over a hundred stories high
on the South Tower
in love on Top of the World
If we learn nothing else from this
tragedy we learn that life
is short and there is no time for hate
–wife of Flight 93 pilot, 2002
Tonight you turn twenty-one
and I am toppled
from shock and awe at the Israel-
Hamas war because Daughter
you are living proof of
just how damn easy it is to love
A Tree Falls in the Forest of Men
1992 will leave you worse for wear | you will train for your first triathlon | days will be spent cycling, running, purging | watching Silence of the Lambs in the Oxford Theater will undo you | the scene when she helps him load furniture into his van | this will be the year you break your middle finger helping a stranger untangle the leashes of five dogs from a tree | you will apply to law school & cram eighteen final credits to graduate & ask your professor to stop calling | your parents finally divorce | your father will refuse to remove his wedding ring | your mother will start an over-fifty singles group at Good Shepherd Church—Betwixters | a fuck you thirty years in the making | your father a lamb to the slaughter | takes in feral cats | places a felled Sycamore tree in his living room just for them | when they chase each other the branches shake as if the soul of the tree | this will be the year loneliness wins | the silence of bark | you will live at home after graduation | intern at a firm downtown | fall in love in the file room | your lover will get Miss Saigon tickets to celebrate your law school acceptance | that night your older brother will say this guy is a loser | you are forbidden to go | stupid you don’t answer the door | your brother will not remember this night | your lover will leave in his old Chevette | you will make a mixtape of break-up songs | in your recurring dream the felled Sycamore sprouts wings | your cry is heard
Because Your Husband’s Shirt is Ironed
is the punchline
of my husband’s assistant coach
meeting me finally
that’s how I knew you were in town
I politely smile
turn to hug my former student
who’s often ostracized for being queer
the lunch crew
misses you, Jacob tells me
I hug him again
to confirm my appreciation for the wrinkles
he causes in the First Presbyterian
private school fabric
while at the Pizza Joint in downtown
Augusta my son orders
a large pie and extra garlic knots
rather than the garden salad
dry no dressing
my daughter chooses
a week before the Homecoming dance
and eight moms start
a text thread to make plans
one mom texts I’m sorry
promises to be more organized next year
I respond let’s remember the dads
don’t have a Homecoming
dance group chat – no response
is the punchline as they iron
out the wrinkle that is me
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
Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a poet, educator, activist, and essayist who splits time between Los Angeles, CA, and Augusta, Georgia. A finalist for Best Microfiction 2023, she is the author of six books: one parenting guide, three full length poetry collections, and two chapbooks. Candice is a mentor for incarcerated writers through PEN America and serves as a poetry reader for The Los Angeles Review. Please find her at www.candicemkelseypoet.com.