Joseph Chaney

Wrong-Footed

For Blake Burr

When my friend’s daughter refused to wear shoes
on the right feet (they felt good turned against
the arches), my friend let her choose her way,
because why argue with what a child feels?
Our parents wouldn’t have heard it. No child
of theirs walks in splayed shoes like a damn clown.
She may be a genius who sees through us
isn’t how they thought. Friends, too, stood on watch
to catch us at any wayward weirdness,
mocking our failures. Because they loved us.
Our kids now see how hard it is for us
to know ourselves, not feeling what we feel.
We go on, doubting our lives, we have to.
This, our chosen way of changing the world.

Joseph Chaney is a poet from Tennessee. He was the first in his extended working-class family to attend college. His poem “Riches” was published in Best New Poets 2023. Others have appeared in The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Atlanta Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Wisconsin Review, Chiron Review, and Apple Valley Review. Some of his math poems are published in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. Chaney teaches literature and writing at Indiana University South Bend, where he directs Wolfson Press.