"There's No Lowly Worm" by Candice M. Kelsey

People have no problem being cruel.

Find a dying rattlesnake 

On the side of the road in the Angeles National Forest?

Google if you can eat it. How to

Skin it. Dare your twelve-year-old daughter

To make the first cut.

And now your daughter is my client.

I work with her to write a college essay

On her desire to study bio medical engineering at UCLA.

What if I demonstrate my interest in animals?

Compassion if you can tolerate it. How she

Butchered it. Told me not to worry

It tasted like chicken.

And I email my therapist asking if we can call.

Hit send before I finish

Explaining I had an upsetting night. Tutoring

The sister of a previous client. What went wrong?

We needed a hook to catch their attention

And I am hooked in the throat

Like a bass or a pike or trout in Lake Isabella.

Cincinnati and I’m twenty-one again

Ready for the law firm picnic. Just an intern am I in love?

He’s a law student telling me what to file

And I’m in the fax room in heels.

I miss my bus and call my brother to pick me up

At the nearest station northwest 

Of the city. You’ll learn the system he tells me.

It’s different from making tuna subs at Subway, huh?

When the law student meets him

He doesn’t shake his hand. Cruelty keeps us 

From each other. They make fun of his name

And explain he’s not up to snuff.

Don’t you know you can do better, Candice?

And I don’t want to do better

But learn life is nothing like Richard Scarry

Told us. Rattlesnakes skinned and eaten by a little girl.

Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a writer and educator living in Los Angeles and Georgia. Her work explores the intersections of place, body, and belonging; she has been featured in SWWIM, The Laurel Review, Poet Lore, Passengers Journal, and About Place among others. Candice reads for The Los Angeles Review, and her comfort-character is Jessica Fletcher.