Untitled
“Untitled” by Kendall Grady came in 3rd place for the 2022 Sappho Prize, selected by guest judge Jos Charles. We’re honored to share this atmospheric poem with you.
You will have been either the speaker or the addressed of this poem. Some of us are cursed enough to have been both. One thing is sure—I have not been a fruit fly, a lemon, a pear. There is no title for this. If I could, I’d live in this world where even the daisies push / themselves up by their dicks. —Jos Charles, guest judge
UNTITLED
I invite you over to play house. After all
the box wine, you puke straight red
The tub looks like a corn syrup suicide,
but you keep cutting the wind
Your hand yapping like the dead
head of a rattler between my legs
until you finally pass out on the pullout
couch, a pale windsock, a dry moth
over a used car lot. You can’t tell a lemon
from a pear. Such a young
bag of bones! Your parents
take turns making your cell
go burrr. The daisies push
themselves up by their dicks.
It’s spring and we could’ve been
anything back from the dead
A nuclear family, pirate property,
a fruit fly released
from a truck of oranges
dazzled and afraid