'I want to be at both houses'
Here's a short but loaded poem by a six-year-old from South Carolina, Jo'lene Dailey, from RYPA, the Rattle Young Poets Anthology. Rattle is a prominent literary journal. How many children have felt this way?
WHAT I WANT TO DO MOST OF THE TIME
by Jo'lene Dailey
It feels like I need
To go to my dad's house
And when I'm at my dad's house
I want to go to my mom's house
I want to be at both houses
American Life in Poetry is made possible by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Torie Dailey, “What I Want to Do Most of the Time,” from Rattle Young Poets Anthology, (The Rattle Foundation, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Torie Dailey and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2016 by the Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-06.
