Water I Won’t Touch
My partner & I only believe
in good omens,
because we are young and gay
and generally unbothered
when god tells us
we are misbehaved.
In response, we invite hell-
hounds into our bed
and invest in a proper vacuum.
Religion in America
is taken much
too seriously. And though
we are dying,
please watch us rejoice
simply at not having killed
the house plants, simply
at having cooked a meal
even and through.
from Water I Won’t Touch (Copper Canyon, 2021)
I’ve been reading Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s Water I Won’t Touch all week, and it’s such a tender, thoughtful collection — extending personal intimacy and anxiety and vulnerability into this deep, compassionate care for the world. You see that in this poem, which I’ll post in full below, titled in the book as “We remain foolishly hopeful (or, obituary for the topsoil)”:
I am forever concerned
for the quality of the breast milk
I’ll never make. My partner and I, are out
here, in the sun, gardening in our ugly human suits
and lusting the next produce. We take the temperature
of each bell pepper, each tomato, and we hope for a healthy
harvest. We are always hoping for the best. But humans
have sent all their worst inventions straight into
the soil. You can taste the plastic before
it’s even grown, before it’s even
melting in your mouth.
The poem moves from deeply personal anxiety — “I am forever concerned / for the quality of the breast milk / I’ll never make” — to this critique of the wider treatment of the world — “humans / have sent all their worst inventions straight into / the soil.” It’s a move borne out of a true care for the way in which all of us are laced together like latticework. Our innermost anxieties often reflect collective concerns, or are often the consequences of systemic failures. Candrilli’s poetry focuses on those intersections, the way in which society’s constant, relentless failings play out on the most intimate levels, with real people balancing the needs of real lives.
Today’s poem does that same work. It holds so much within its few lines. The first time I read it, I was struck by the couplet:
when god tells us
we are misbehaved.
The choice here to say “we are misbehaved” rather than “we misbehaved” feels like such a stark example of the relentless, minute, powerful work at play in Candrilli’s poetry. It dwells awkward in the mouth, that are. And it forces you to linger there, in that idea, for a little while. And then it prompts a few questions that begin to form the basis of a critique. What does it mean to be misbehaved? Who has the authority or power to make a verb a noun, and then to apply that noun to someone? Who is burdened by the feeling, constantly, of being told they are someone or something, of not being able to decide for oneself? What does it mean to live within a world that forces that feeling on someone? How can one resist?
Candrilli’s poem raises those questions just by the choice of language. That brief word — are — levies a criticism by virtue of its awkwardness, by the way it asks the reader to reconsider one’s relationship to language. It carries so much weight. It puts into language a way that the world communicates its power, and, in doing so, asks us to reckon with such a thing. And that’s part of the value of a poem: it’s not just about what is said. It’s about how, too, as cliche as that sounds. And the how-ness of a poem — the seemingly-small choices a poet makes with language and structure and style — can shape the way we interact with the world. The how-ness of a poem can change the way we listen, or speak. And the way we listen or speak can change the way we interact with one another. And the way we interact with one another can change our lives.
This week, I gave one of my classes a winter break homework assignment. I asked each of them to create a “language journal” — to write four brief entries about moments of language that stand out to them in the world. Maybe an ad they saw, or a text message that moved them in some way toward joy or frustration or any type of feeling. Maybe a phrase heard in passing. I wanted them to be open to the ways in which language — heard or whispered or seen or misheard — is like this sticky, malleable membrane hovering over and in between the dailiness of our lives. We move through it and with it and among it, and when we pay attention to it, we begin to have some agency with how we feel — and how we can make space for others to feel — in this world.
I am doing the assignment with them, and I wrote my first post about an ad on the subway (that the poet Ben Purkert tweeted about not long ago, too). It’s an ad for some Google-partnered phone, and utilizes the repetition of the word “work” to open up the possibility for the person who owns the phone to work literally anywhere. Work from Central Park…Work from your bed…Work from wherever. The repetition has a numbing quality — soon you forget the connotation of the word “work” — it could just as well be any other word. Maybe it means play. Maybe it means love. If you lose yourself in the language, if you succumb to it, then the ad works. But if you can see the language at play, if you can name it and see its how-ness, then you can resist the ad. You will also probably get really sad, as I did. I forgot to mention that. There is a sadness, sometimes, maybe often, that comes with being aware. There is also, I hope and believe and sometimes even know, a bit of joy.
Today’s poem has its joys. They are real and true. In fact, the joy of this poem comes, I think, from its awareness of the world and its ability to channel that awareness into a kind of resistance. You notice that in the lines immediately following the lines I quoted above:
In response, we invite hell-
hounds into our bed
and invest in a proper vacuum.
In response to being labeled as “misbehaved,” the speaker and their partner invite mythic beings into their home — a kind of playful, magical resistance — and also make a commitment toward domestic life: they want not just to clean, but to do it well. They invest in a vacuum. It’s like saying: yes, we recognize we live in this deeply materialistic society, and if we have to participate, we are going to prioritize care. And that’s something I love about this poem: how it centers the act of doing small things well, of tending your tiny garden, of cleaning your room, of engaging in ordinary models of care as a way of resisting the language of the world that says you are unfit for life, or undeserving of care.
That sentiment shines forth in the poem’s ending:
And though
we are dying,
please watch us rejoice
simply at not having killed
the house plants, simply
at having cooked a meal
even and through.
As such, I’m thinking of small victories today. The word that stands out to me in these final couplets is simply. I love how it’s paired with variations on the same phrase. First, it reads simply at not having. And then, it reads simply at having. It’s a beautiful way of illustrating one dichotomy of life. That joy comes simply, yes, but also that joy comes from both what we have and what we don’t have. And that not having something — such as not having death, or not having violence — opens the door for having something else. Like life, yes. And what life brings with it, too.
It reminds me of a passage from Patti Smith’s Woolgathering, which I’ve been reading this week. In it, she writes about “the music of the woolgatherers performing their task.” She continues:
Bending, extending, shaking out the air. Gathering what needs to be gathered. The discarded. The adored. Bits of human spirit that somehow got away. Caught up in an apron. Plucked by a gloved hand.
There’s a way in which, through both Smith and Candrilli’s writing, the simple becomes transcendent. I love that sentence: Gathering what needs to be gathered. It’s such a beautiful way of defining labor, these words gather and need. They invite the idea of a way of being that is at once communal and necessary, rather than individualistic and excessive.
Like Candrilli’s poem, this moment in Smith’s book pays attention to one singular moment of intention. And that, too, is why I’m thinking of small victories today. In a world that often tries to get us to spread our attention across so many different mediums in so many different ways, prompting so many different reactions, any moment of intention becomes a form of care. To be intentional at all today — about whatever small thing you are being intentional about, whether it’s your mind or your body or your meal or your plants — is a kind of resistance to a world that has its own intentions for each of us, which also means all of us.
In another poem, “Poem for the Start of a New Decade,” Candrilli writes:
It’s 2020, and most of my friends
are laid off, and the unusually clear water is rising
on all of us. What would you like me to say? I can’t
internalize it all. Instead, I’ll find some use for our
lemon rinds, I’ll leave every violet flower untouched.
Just like Smith’s passage above, Candrilli’s intention to “find some use for our / lemon rinds” centers, again, that idea of gathering what needs to be gathered, of making do with what little we have to make do with. Of letting the natural world be a beautiful reminder of our own collective possibility.
I have to remind myself often that it’s no small thing to do small things. It’s no small thing to water the few plants I have. It’s no small thing to peel garlic, smash it with the wide blade of my knife, and chop it as fine as I can. It’s no small thing to save some of the pasta’s cooking water for the sauce. It’s no small thing to wake up early to read. It’s no small thing to snooze, too, and give myself some rest. It’s no small thing to recognize when what I need does not feel like what I want. It’s no small thing to ask myself why that might be the case. And it’s no small thing when what I want and what I need feel the same, united together and shining like the one streetlight that happens to work on an otherwise dark street. It’s no small thing to admit that sometimes, or always, it feels a little too hard to be alive. And it’s no small thing to try to cultivate some sort of need for care out of that feeling, and to try extend that care both to myself and to others.
Today’s poem reminds me of the beauty of small and simple things. The danger of the grand, overarching narratives imposed on us by society and the structures within society is that they often leave us feeling demeaned or neglected or worthless. How do you live up to a language that does not include you? How do you live within it? I don’t know the answer. But today’s poem reminds me that joy is possible when we cultivate our own language of care, and when we live inside that language, and all that it allows.