Daytona 500

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.

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast 

  

“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

Don’t miss the weekend Poem-a-Day newsletter, now with a special “About This Poem” section every Saturday and Sunday, featuring insight and commentary on classic poems from poets and scholars of poetry. Read last Sunday’s here.