The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Teaching a Wild Thing by Kindra McDonald

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Teaching a Wild Thing by Kindra McDonald (Kelsay Books 2022).

Absence

When I tuck the son I don’t have into his bed at night
I find acorns and pinecones in his sheets, little bits of day
he has carried with him into dreams and I’ll collect them on a shelf
and label them as artifacts, evidence of loss.

The daughter I don’t have has spent hours searching
for shark’s teeth on the beach, her wet hair sticking
to her cheek, she’ll shed sand from her skin that I’ll
catch in a jam jar put in the cabinet to glisten in the dark.

For weeks I have heard heavy equipment groaning
at the edge of the neighborhood, coming from the pool
that for the past few summers has become quiet, emptied
of cookouts and swim lessons, birthday parties and sunbathers.

The same pool my husband swam in as a child when our house
was his grandparent’s home and he’d spend summers lazing
feet dangling in the deep end, popsicle sticky in his hand. On my
daily walks I have taken to detouring past the pool, see it is closing

For good, a community vote to make it disappear. The lifeguard
seat, pool house and playground dismantled, swing by swing. The
rusty fence, old eyesore, ripped out in pieces, a puzzle back in a
box. Each day’s progress is a grave in reverse. The pool filled in
with dirt.

Somewhere in our backyard, my love buried a bird. When he was
ten it crashed into the sunroom windows. Three days later he dug it
up to see if it had rose again. Imagine his confusion over
resurrection. I told him I buried Barbie heads under a tree in my
yard, hoping to sprout new dolls that looked like me. I don’t say I
imagine what our children look like.

I have given up on sleep and slip out at night. I step easily
over caution tape and walk towards what would have been the edge of
the deep end, all is soft and level. Was there ever a hole in this
ground? Pretend my feet are dangling cool and swinging in the
water, the jump, the splash—

I lay pressed on the newly turned soil, my face even with grass
seedlings pushing to life, and I don’t know if I’m floating or
drowning—these days, it’s hard to tell.

Kindra McDonald is the author of the collections Teaching a Wild Thing, Fossils and In the Meat Years. She was the recipient of the 2020 Haunted Waters Press Poetry Award. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and is a poet-artist working and teaching in mixed-media and found poetry. She served as the Poetry Society of Virginia Southeastern region Vice President from 2019-2022. You can find her in the woods or at www.kindramcdonald.com.

Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.