Poem Written on the Notes App on My iPhone While Sitting on the Couch Watching Sesame Street with My Daughter
Leigh Chadwick
Today, the forecast calls for a thirty-seven percent chance of thoughts and prayers. In Kennesaw, Georgia, it’s illegal for the head of every household to not own a gun. Nine-hundred and fifty miles to the north, it’s illegal to live to puberty. My six-month-old daughter sits in her highchair and ghostwrites my poems while I spend the afternoon walking ghosts home from school. How do you background-check a rollercoaster? Can you buy a pony with a .50-caliber mounted on its back? Imagine going to Olive Garden and finding a bullet in your fettuccine Alfredo. Studies show in most states it’s easier to become a cop than a barber. Studies show that each study is more depressing than the last. Instead of strapping my daughter into a swing and showing her a map to heaven, I teach her how to dodge bullets by running in the shape of the letter Z. I teach her the difference between a play yard and a graveyard. I ask Siri, When did the birds stop telling us stories? Siri doesn’t respond. She’s taking the rest of the afternoon off. For dinner, I feed my daughter mashed sweet potatoes. Outside, the dog is teaching himself how to howl. Somewhere’s somewhere is sending thoughts and prayers, but they keep getting stuck in the clouds. I spend the evening watching my favorite documentary. It’s the one where Keanu Reeves sits alone on a bench, feeding stale bread to the pigeons.
LEIGH CHADWICK is the author Your Favorite Poet (Malarkey, 2022), as well as the chapbook Daughters of the State (Bottlecap Press, 2021) and the pœtry coloring book This Is How We Learn to Pray, illustrated by Stephanie Kirsten (ELJ Editions, 2021). Her collaborative poetry collection, Too Much Tongue (Autofocus, 2022), co-written with Adrienne Marie Barrios is forthcoming. Leigh’s pœtry has appeared in Salamander, Passages North, The Indianapolis Review, HAD, Pithead Chapel, and Hobart.
Your Favorite Poet is available available from Amazon, Bookshop, B&N, Indiebound, and most other book retailers.
