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Kelly Canaday – “The Gardener”

This month’s Versed in Florida is with poet Kelly Canaday of Naples. She’s a student at Florida Gulf Coast University where she’s majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing. She’s also co-president of FGCU’s Creative Writing Club. She says the desire to hone her writing skills is largely what prompted her to begin attending college at the age of 16.

The Gardener

He’s the fly on your front porch

that sends

lost vessels, lapses of skin

over the striped Earth

The sun wakes

scalloped ferns on the edges

of the yard, a flimsy banner

for the voices drowned in sleep

He sounds of slot machines

and organs playing as

he tends to

the prison in between the windows and the gates

he’s

violent to the ground so he isn’t violent to the

face

that stands at the washing machine inside,

softened from the lace curtain