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Poetry Moment: 'My partner wants me to write them a poem about Sheryl Crow' by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Poet Kayleb Rae Candrilli
RYAN COLLERD
Poet Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Poetry Moment on WPSU is a program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Host Todd Davis is a professor of English and Environmental Studies at Penn State Altoona.

This episode’s poem is “My partner wants me to write them a poem about Sheryl Crow” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli.

Kayleb Rae Candrilli is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a PEW fellowship, and a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. They are the author of Water I Won’t Touch, All the Gay Saints, and What Runs Over. Candrilli's work is published or forthcoming in POETRY, American Poetry Review, and Ploughshares, among other magazines and journals. They grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania and now live in Philadelphia with their partner.

Kayleb Rae Candrilli writes that “love is most astonishing / when it persists after learning where we come from.” None of us is offered a choice about where we are born, what body we find ourselves living in, the families and communities we grow up among. So much of our future is influenced by these matters, and, perhaps, what we most want from another person is to be vulnerable and open about our past, about who we are and what has helped to make us the person we are today, and then still to be loved, despite the scars or mistakes, despite what we find embarrassing about ourselves or what we perceive as a flaw or weakness in our character. I think this poem ultimately poses a question for the reader: What can you offer another person who you love to help them get through another day?

Here's —

My partner wants me to write them a poem about Sheryl Crow

but all I want to do is marry them on a beach
that refuses to take itself too seriously.
So much of our lives have been serious.
Over time, I've learned that love is most astonishing
when it persists after learning where we come from.
When I bring my partner to my childhood home
it is all bullets and needles and trash bags held
at arm’s length. It is my estranged father’s damp
bed of cardboard and cigar boxes filled
with gauze and tarnished spoons. It is hard
to clean a home, but it is harder to clean
the memory of it. When I was young, my
father would light lavender candles and shoot
up. Now, my partner and I light a fire that will
burn all traces of the family that lived here.
Black plastic smoke curdles up, and loose bullets
discharge in the flames. My partner holds
my hand as gunfire rings through
the birch trees. Though this is almost
beautiful, it is not. And if I’m being honest,
my partner and I spend most of our time
on earth feeding one another citrus fruits
and enough strength to go on. Every morning
I pack them half a grapefruit and some sugar.
And they tell me it’s just sweet enough.

—————

That was “My partner wants me to write them a poem about Sheryl Crow” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli.

Hear more episodes of Poetry Moment at WPSU.org/poetrymoment.

Music by Eric Ian Farmer.

Todd Davis is the 2022-23 host of "Poetry Moment" on WPSU.