Brenda told me finding your voice is bullshit. She said Goddidn’t put you on earth to be consistent, though I don’t know who God isto her. His hands were soft as mushrooms said my great-aunt.He couldn’t change a tire. Made his living that way. Gambling.Love toy. Projects. Religious refusal to engage critically. Feature,I meant desire. So sweet and sad it made me sad. The you in the poemchanges when you make it.
Leaderboard
Kelsi Vanada
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“Leaderboard” from Optional Saint by Kelsi Vanada.
Published by Bench Editions on March 19, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Kelsi Vanada.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Kelsi Vanada is a poet and literary translator. She is the author of the collection Optional Saint (Bench Editions, 2025) and the chapbook Rare Earth, and the translator from Spanish and Swedish of seven books of poetry and creative nonfiction, most recently Day’s Fortune by Colombian poet Carlo Acevedo. Kelsi holds MFAs from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Iowa Translation Workshop. She is the Program Director of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) in Tucson, AZ. www.kelsi-vanada.com
The witty, playful poems in Optional Saint stretch sound to sound as they probe the intersections of creativity, translation, religion, and sexuality with curiosity and elasticity, asking: What do we inherit through family, language, and tradition, and what do we create anew? What happens when the sacred and profane collide? Here, nothing is fixed or reasonable, and transformation is an unending process: “A poem is only true in the moment, / and not in the next one.”
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