Poem-a-Day - "Daytona 500" by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

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August 4, 2022 

Daytona 500

Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Where we’re from, we know ballet as Dale Earnhardt
gliding through the traffic of Daytona; we know dance

as our hands moving across a table of drunk Miller Lites.
This is universal because I say it is. When my mother called

me Kayleb for the first time, I remembered the haunted house
on Clifton Hill, how she was tugged away by a hired actor.

I screamed until they took us out the fire escape. To care
is to call a name. To care is to call your mother’s name,

as your father pulls at her ankles. Dear Ma, you know your
hands were always too blue in the winter, strapping snow

chains onto the Ford Expedition. This is a happy memory
because it’s a memory. It is warmer now. Blame global

warming, blame the divorce. It doesn’t matter. All that
matters is the heat of the sun, and both being here to feel it.

Copyright © 2022 by Kayleb Rae Candrilli. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 4, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“This poem is about tenacity, industriousness, and my appreciation and love for my mother. Most of my poems, really, end up being letters of admiration to my mother’s strength.”
Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Kayleb Rae Candrilli is the author of Water I Won’t Touch (Copper Canyon, 2021), among other titles. They are the recipient of a Whiting Award as well as fellowships from the Pew Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Water I Won’t Touch
(Copper Canyon, 2021)

“Of Things and Home” by b: william bearhart
read more
“Muscular Fantasy” by Terrance Hayes
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Thanks to Donika Kelly, author of The Renunciations (Graywolf Press, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Kelly’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year
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