Poetry / Kendra DeColo
:: Isn’t “Food Court” a Lovely Term ::
not just the sound but the place
I mean aren’t Panda Express and Sbarros lovely
with their food garnished on metal trays
how when I’m inside of one
I feel home no matter how far
up route 65 between Kentucky and Indiana
where churches and Subway franchises
neck and I know exactly where I must go
to reach the good Starbucks and avoid the McDonalds
where high school students hand out gift cards
“From Jesus because he loves you”
and I almost took one once
I had been driving alone for hours
on my way to a conference
where I would have gotten drunk
in the good old days
would have gotten tanked
and made some bad decision
not out of stupidity or self-destruction
but a deliberate attempt
to feel more than I thought
the world has to offer
like ransacking a hotel’s free buffet
stuffing my pockets full
of food I’ll never eat
I didn’t yet understand
the beauty of a road
connecting towns I’ll never see in daylight
decked out in neon effigies
each vestibule offering its own flavor
of sanctuary
or I did
and couldn’t tolerate it
how I took the gift card
from the girl’s hand
and imagined what it would feel like
to be forgiven
and for a moment I did
and I gave it back
:: I Hope Hillary Is Having Good Sex ::
I hope Hillary is having good sex
I say to myself at the farmer’s market
While fingering the over-ripened bustier
Of an heirloom tomato
So close to rot it nearly sucks
My pinky into its dappled maw
I hope she’s at least getting decent head I say again
Now that she’s proven a woman
Can win the popular vote
And still lose to an imbecile
Because sexism
Because Russian interference
Because my grandmother
Who worked for LBJ and then
Nixon and was harassed by male coworkers
Until she had to quit
Even she said of Hillary, “There is something
About that woman I just don’t trust”
I hope Hillary is getting it in
By Bill or someone better at listening
Who asks her what she needs
Then gets directly down to business
Without preamble or pussyfooting
Someone who emerges
Only for a sandwich or breath of fresh air
I hope she has multiple sidepieces
Each a different build and scent
And when they ask
To see her closet full of immaculate suits
Organized and shimmering on their racks
Like a god’s molted skin
She lets them touch just the hem
:: I Don’t Like to Have Sex While I’m on My Period ::
even though my husband is the kind of guy
who isn’t afraid
of a woman’s fluids
who might even go down
if the flow is light
a real man
you might say
if the logic wasn’t steeped
in toxic masculinity the way
the sheets are steeped in blood
after making love on day three
the rasp of stain beneath us
like a bat fluttering its wings
in a puddle of Robitussin
I can’t help but think
it’s crude
to put down a towel
before we begin
the way a man sticks a gloved
finger up his wife’s vagina
to assess if she’s done bleeding
clean you might say
if that language wasn’t steeped
in violent misogyny
because isn’t my blood the cleanest
part about me
fuck a towel
if you want to go deep
you better be willing to draw blood
my husband is a real man
isn’t afraid to smell
the shed lining
muffle his face in the spasm of cells
wasn’t afraid to watch our daughter
emerge and split me open
crowning
which means my body
concussed around her like a crown
which means
there was so much blood
I had to touch it
to remember where I came from
the hot and pulsing corona
ruckus of DNA
metallic and stinging
Love, forgive me
I do not want to be touched
while my body
orchestrates this unraveling
as much as I love
the bouquet of clots
rioting around the base of your cock
bright as a truck stop souvenir
to own a part of you
where the blood remains
dried
and hissing
a dwelling
of dank perfume
as the body
travels back to its source
and I am answerable to no one
not even my own name
:: There Is a Moment I Feel Free ::
driving to the taco place
where a few weeks back
a shooting happened
right where our car was parked
and in retrospect
it seems negligent
to have been that happy
sitting at the counter
squeezing limes
over everything
and Aretha
is now in my speakers
the song where she sings
in quick succession
“you’re all I need to get by…
baby you know that you got me”
and maybe motherhood
has made me soft
which is close to a kind
of ghoulishness
I don’t know
I know it has taken me
35 years to learn how to dress
appropriately for the weather
to apply moisturizer before bed
and sunscreen in the morning
to be this in love
with the life I’ve made
and care for it
no matter how reckless that is
:: Crow Flying Overhead with a Hole in Its Wing ::
I looked up and saw you this morning
flying over a tex-mex restaurant
the hole in your wing
the size of a bottle cap
I googled what it means
and read about parasites
but nothing about whether it is
a benediction
to see an animal flying
with this perfect portal in its wing
through which I saw the sky
through which its jeweled language
leaked muted and streaky
through which I heard
the first song I ever played my daughter
holding her near the window
that overlooks our street
through which I saw everything
I had been afraid of
which was a kind of death
which was a kind of
abandon
buckling toward joy
as I have fallen to my knees
in grief
but have never known
what it sounds like
to sing without expecting
mercy
through which the wind
might touch us
which is the only
benediction I need
From the writer
:: Account ::
After the election, which coincided with the early months of new motherhood, a few incidents triggered a feeling of being unsafe in my own home, similar to symptoms of anxiety: the feeling of not being safe in my body. (How many times has the world made me feel this way, and how many times did I internalize the message that I cannot keep myself safe?)
These poems, written during a time of healing, were a way to feel safe again, to celebrate my new identity as a mother, and name in the public space of a poem, what is unacceptable to me, politically and personally.
We are living under an administration that has been accurately described as living in the house of an abuser. I have been thinking all these years how our connection to language will keep us safe and grounded in our own truth. I have been thinking about the way poems have always been a way of saying enough, a way of marking a sacred boundary around who we are (individually and collectively) and what we need in order to thrive.
Kendra DeColo is the author of I am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World (BOA Editions, 2021), My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016) and Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia Books, 2014), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2013 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House Magazine, Waxwing, Los Angeles Review, Bitch Magazine, VIDA, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a 2019 Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has received awards and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Millay Colony, Split this Rock, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. She is co-host of the podcast RE/VERB: A Third Man Books Production and she lives in Nashville, Tennessee.