One Poem Only is a daily poetry podcast offering a quiet moment with a single poem—read aloud, without analysis or noise. Today's poem is: Dear Unknown Ancestor Naked in the Woods by Danielle Eleanor La Valle after Chris Kads -

I haven't gone back far enough,

keep going, keep going,

back, back, back,

farther still...

...ah, there, there you are, sitting on a log.

Waiting maybe.

You are wind-thickened skin, tattoos made

of soot and saliva,

scars I didn't know a body could hold.

I look at you and see an early death,

abscess teeth, parasites, tuberculosis.

You smile with the half teeth you have remaining.

You look at me as I am, confused and wrapped in many layers of highly profitable fear.

You are deaf in one ear and you limp,

rheumatoid is already curling your fingers,

but you're alive, gloriously and nakedly in this wood.

We are I think the same age, though that means something different here.

Then asking with your eyes -neither of us have any language that will mean anything to the other- you want to know why am I so sad, why am I so afraid?

You put your hand on the scar that missed my eye,

you hold up the face I fear is sagging too soon,

you slid your arms around my soft, asymmetrical body.

More from Danielle Eleanor Lavalle ↓

• @danielleeleanorlavalle on Instagram

And now for the poem this was written after. Dear Personal Care Department God by Chris Kads after Lancee Whetman -

God of the Personal Care Department,

please grant me musk. Grant me

the strength of “Steel Courage” -

buffness in a bottle. Let my

body be a vessel of “dragon’s breath”

and “warrior’s blood”. Allow me,

like men, to be baptized

in wet swagger, to have my

preconceived softness

wash away with the scent

of toughness.

Bless me,

with blindness in the face

of razors. Grant me

the normalization

of forest-y armpits

to pair with the scent of

“Sasquatch Foot”.

And, please, oh holy

Personal Care Department God,

revoke your commandments

and let the avoidance of “Secret”

and smoothness

not be a sin.

Amen.

More from Chris Kads ↓

• @chris_kads on Instagram

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