TRANSCRIPT

 I'm Myka Kielbon, and this is The Slowdown.

 We asked you, our listeners, to help us select poems for the show. Today, instead of hearing a moment of reflection from Maggie, you'll hear from a member of our Slowdown community. Enjoy.

My name is Meghan Elizabeth Kelley, and I live in the Philadelphia area. The past, I think, is part of the present in a lot of our lives. And I think sometimes things happen too quickly, too soon, and they become our past, but they never really leave us. We inherit lots of different things, and there are ways in which, with the weight of the world and the weight of uncertainty, that we can turn those violences toward ourselves.

The last couple years have been really intense for me personally, and in the world. And poetry demands a kind of presence. And so, I think the choice to be here is also the choice to be witness to what is happening in the world.

There is an incredible amount of violence. There's an incredible amount of grief. And, demand from myself, a witnessing of joy, a witnessing of beauty, of wonder. I feel in awe of people that are determined to make art and make things right now, especially when there is so much that is pushing back against doing that. Destruction is here and present, and still there is a way to reimagine a life, and there is a way to move forward. And maybe the beginnings of that are in these moments of intense presence.

Something that I love about poems is, I think, poems have this ability to hold multiple truths at once in this really compressed way. And to do it in a way where the reader or the listener can feel both those things together, the grief and the joy, and shows how they're intertwined. And the joy part isn't an antidote to the grief, and it's not in spite of the grief. Now I feel — joy — it's all intertwined together.

Today's poem is determined to be hopeful in a way, and it's a kind of hope that seems to exist among all of it.

Late Work
by Andrés Cerpa

I feel compelled to give you an ending, a promise of hope

to move against despair

even if the act is simple as falling in love, another city,

a long day casting shadows in the park.

I lost something & can't get over the fact—

the most powerful world

was the world of destruction & high. And/or,

I ran through the cane fields in splendor. When the interior

puzzled with the physical world

I cut myself down. The way & I became brothers.

Not blood. Not sugar. Not rust.

Snow in Calichoza.

In the too soon & always, I held the machete,

I built myself

a life.

Andrés Cerpa, “Late Work” from THE PALACE. Copyright © 2026 by Andrés Cerpa. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

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