Sleeping
with a knife
under her pillow
This is how
the girl lives
now
A girl assaulted
exploited
YouTubed
to death
her kind of
mom milking
views for
money
What hurts me
most is how
I poem
while watching
the show
writing words
like a courtroom
artist sketching
witnesses
&
I do this
while watching
the show
with my
daughter
written after watching the documentary Bad Influence
Thoughts unwind, and there’s dancing.
Freed of what binds, just dancing.
The beat and the rhythm so
Easy to find while dancing.
Skirts swirl, and through breezy air
the music winds while dancing.
Sleeves slip down and uncover
hands intertwined while dancing.
Twirling, one sloughs off all words
said unkind about dancing.
A whirl and a laugh—each step
will remind love for dancing.
The world’s a bustle, yet still
there is time just for dancing.
If not in flesh, then at least
in my mind I am dancing.
Mountaintop Removal
Most of the men in my family worked coal.
One grandfather ran dozers,
the other bathed in axle grease.
My father lit powder charges—
each blast shook the hollows
until the ridges answered back.
I moved to Lexington for lab work,
drawing blood in a clean white coat.
My Seattle supervisor once stopped
on a mountain road, pocketed a lump of coal,
and placed it proudly on his desk like a trophy.
I had breathed that dust since birth.
They call it mountaintop removal—
a clearing of every tree and living root.
When I lost the foothills of Johnson County,
the flat blue horizon of central Kentucky
felt like an open wound.
They seed the scars with cheap fescue.
True restoration is slower—
native hardwoods, patient succession.
I began with moss and small truths:
a break in the clouds,
the rhythm of walking.
I am no longer the peak I was.
My plateau is wider now.
The sun reaches me all at once—
I have traded height
for room to grow a deciduous soul.
Cowboy, red hair wind-lashed, lifts his head, breathes a different kind of darkness.
I want to get drunk so bad
That I can taste it
And all of the things that I need to do it
Are right here
A bottle of rum and some ice cubes
A sugar rimmed glass
Fresh limes and a willing hand to
Cut
The one thing that I don’t have in my house
So I guess if I want it
That bad
I’ll have to put something on
And go
Out
I think I’ll drink directly from the bottle
Because maybe today
A fresh drink
Wasn’t mint
“Don’t open the door to heaven
Oh, subtle city sitting
along the curves of places
others fly over, without suggestion,
this ode is for you,
for the kindness your people show.
Others stop for food, which seems
reason enough to settle here,
but we sought answers to questions
that we didn’t have the voice or words to ask yet.
Almost every person we distressed
with our presence over weeks and weeks
possessed answers to our fumbled queries—
even if those answers displeased
several senses of decency.
Surely others see the treasure stoppered here
and its propensity to surprise,
so many memories with friends
sewn together around work and around
the chance we will not be here next year.
The most sorrowful sound to hear
is the whisper of the word elsewhere
thrown into the quandary of trusted specters
already so tenuously built on speculations.
You came into our bedroom
Stood beside your father
Slumped shoulders, head hung low
Your hair was slick with sweat and rain
You looked at me through knotted strands
You stood fidgeting like you always do
Your eyes searching for a sign
Filled with three day old shame
Voice shaking as you apologized
The relief and rage I felt at once
No one prepares us parents for
Not in times like these moments
You simply wanted so desperately
To feel free like a “grown man”
Unbeknownst to you, most grown men
Are actually dying, trying to stay young
The precipice of adulthood is harsh
I wanted to scoop you up, hold you tight
Pour all the love into the crack needing filled
That you had spent three days running from
I just wasn’t sure you’d understand at the time
So I gave an affirmative response
Then asked for a hug, holding on
Probably longer than you thought necessary
Maybe I needed it more than you did?
Sometimes offering grace with a slice of silence
Speaks so much louder than words.
I remember when I was little
My papaw had a fourwheeler
Enjoyed with every cookout
By laughing granddaughters,
A worrying grandmother,
And fathers who had one or two beers
Cruising around that huge country field
Years went by
Daughters grew older
And too big to fit on with their dads
That fourwheeler sat
Inside the rickety old barn
Only used by an older sister to sneak around
A while later I saw a fourwheeler again
Rode it with a guy to steer
In awe of how the mountains consumed us
Reminded of the time gone by
Now I remember those joyrides
The wind smacking my face
Blowing my hair beyond hope of control
And I continue to laugh
Like that little girl
Holding onto the man that she trusts
