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Column 612

What I Want to Do Most of the Time

Intro by Ted Kooser
12.11.2016

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

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

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), 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 © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

Column 613
Column 611