2 Poems

Poem I Cannot Bring Myself to Title

because to name a thing

is to pretend it will not vanish.

Naming a dog

is delayed grief dressed as devotion.

—Elsa!—Simba!

As if syllables can outlast sudden silence,

as if calling them in from the yard

keeps them from leaving.

Can we enter a contract with time,

as if whispering Pinto or Yonah

into folded petals of fur while they dream

makes absence pronounceable?

A name is not a fence. It cannot contain

small terrains of warmth.

We don't need names to know love,

but we need them to bear it.

Adams in the Garden, we slip titles like collars

around what’s wild.

Consider the vaquita. Was it protected

by its name? The Javan rhino

and Amur leopard, all extinct. The first poetry, naming

was once a taxonomy of awe.

Now it is elegy.

To title a poem is to wait on the shore

for an ark that won’t arrive. We call to the sky.

—Polaris!—Canis Major!

As if the constellations have some say.

As if the waters are not rising.

As if on Bondi Beach
candles were not lit when the shots came—

Do we still believe fire can argue with flood?
That one wick might teach the dark

its limits. Somewhere, an ark is taking on water.

Senbazuru

We could share lots of things / but for this half-folded map of us / read and reread / smudged with caution / rivered in restraint / every road labeled not yet / in this long migration / winging a clipped parenthesis / leaving asterisks in the sand / we inhale optimism’s slow-burn / forage for faith / and orbit the same stubborn gravity of footnotes / trading talking points instead of confessions / You could answer questions / silence small talk’s broken pottery / the Yōkai of disengagement / we say friend / write wish lists / and shred them like maps not to scale / today I fold them into a thousand paper cranes / want to know how you really are / in the wetlands of being seen / offer you one crane for every time I didn’t say I miss you / another for each sentence you deleted / let’s not look up one day / soaring over the Himalayas / only to find the sky is made of paper

Candice M. Kelsey (she/her) is a poet and educator living in both L.A. and Georgia. She’s developed a taste for life’s absurd glow, long skirts, and juicy opera podcasts. She roasts vegetables like it’s a sacred ritual and wears mostly black because her late father-in-law said it’s not her color. Somehow, her work has received Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominations, and she woke up one day as the author of 9 books. Please acknowledge her existence @Feed_Me_Poetry or https://www.candicemkelseypoet.com/.