What I Want to Do Most of the Time

Intro by Ted Kooser

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?

By Jo'lene Dailey

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

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 © 2022 by The Poetry Foundation.