Hot warm bubbles in a peach colored tub

Big enough to hold her dainty feet

Swallowing them up in a froth

Glistening with the sheen of iridescent 

The sunlight reflecting the light on the bubbles

The air perfumed with the sweet smell

Tangerine

Mamaw’s favorite body wash

Soaking her feet as my mom would sit

A soft, cotton towel in her lap

For drying

Only after washing mamaw’s feet

Ever so delicately

Yet with such care and intention

The warm water mixed with bubbly soap

Leaving mamaw’s crepe like skin

Even more soft

The blue of her veins softening

A lilac hue peeking through

The warm, reddened skin from the water

Pat dried feet then 

Covered in tangerine lotion

Her sweet, little feet

A sweet service of love and humility

Between two generations

Bare teeth
flesh
bite down
hard.
Can’t you
see me?
Losing it
in here
alone
Fire 
in the bones
of man
looking for
something
to burn
Something
to burn away
the rage
the spitfire
all 
that is left
is the
ashes.

An ode to volatile organic compounds inspired by Sylvia Plath’s Mushrooms

We are
the smoke
on the knobs
of the Daniel Boone National Forest

Always
Stealing over
Weaving around
Wraithlike

Contradictory
Both born yesterday
And settling here long before
the first long hunters crossed the Cumberland Gap

Masquerading
as the smoke of man’s fire
We are in fact an optical illusion
performed by Mother Nature

Welcome sign for the diaspora
coming home to the coalfields
A comforting blanket
those rooted in the hollers can wrap around their shoulders

Perfectly voiceless we have inspired
artists to sing and sign our stories
and my sisters and I will shroud these hills and hollers
until the end of time.

i barely stave off fear
to face urban rush hour 
in a two-ton car powered
on four hefty tires.
tired.
making it to work
is a struggle
and then I return home,
a concrete biome.  

She weighs only as much as two peas,
a couple of flimsy sticky notes,
a postage stamp;
air currents and her determination
carry her tiny mass.  

Spring and she has returned
from a mountain of sacred fir
in central Mexico –
a migration on marigold wings.
Her heart has bridged the divide
of 2000 wide miles.  

i get in my car,
gird myself with a deep breath,
back out of the driveway.  

Invincible,
she prepares to lay hundreds of eggs
in waiting milkweed
one at a time.  

Todos somos viajeros,
pero Ella es La Verdadera Reina.  
We are all travelers,
but She is the True Queen:

Her majesty, the Monarch.

I don’t know if God

counts days, stores them like marbles

humming in a jar.

does he chomp them one by one?

Does it hurt? The not knowing?

I don’t know why it’s

good dogs that exit stage two,

kidney failure. Still the curtain closes behind

orbs gone cloudy with our time.

I don’t know what I

would say to her, skin uncracked.

Eat cake while you can,

moisturize, avoid realtors.

Count every last white whisker.

Doncha want sumpthin’ just ’cause ya can’t have it? 

Ma only took a nip now and then,
but when the saloons shut down,
she ran to the doctor for a prescription,
whiskey allowed for medicinal purposes.

Now, she buys a pint every three weeks.
She puts it in tea, makes it last.
She bought a kit to make sacramental wine,
and dug out the old Department of Agriculture
“How To” booklet. 

She wrote to Cousin Clara in Jackson County, 
“Any chance you know someone…”
She grieved when federal agents
smashed the still at Limestone and Third.

Cicadas, cicadas, cicadas

You are everywhere 
In the trees
In the breeze
Singing and buzzing

You have my head spinning
Round, round, round
Like a merry-go-round

Up from the ground
Ready to play
Find a mate
Make sweet music

Three to five weeks
Above the ground
To play around

Reproduce

Die

Silence

Sweet

The hypnotist said, confident for once
In his craft, “blink once for yes,
Blink twice for no.”
The optometrist, lodged like a half-dissolved mint
On his own exam chair,
Blinked twice.
“Alrighty then,” the hypnotist said;
“why not just say something rather than
Playing along?” The optometrist, still blinking—
A gnat had torpedoed his eyes—
Said, “I forgot we weren’t playing
Simon Says.”
“In that case,” said the hypnotist, “you doubly fail:
You failed to hypnotize and
Simon never said.” “No,
You failed,” responded the optometrist,
“The chart says none of that.”
“To be perfectly clear,” said the hypnotist,
“You are indeed the loser. You see, I’m Tiresias”
(Lifting a breast as in confirmation)
“And my eyes scroll a different chart,
A view your phoropter’s denied.
Your chart’s written in vanishing
Ink, characters twisted from hair and bone.
My chart says you’re damned to the labyrinth
Of this strip mall hell. Collect your paycheck
And die.”  

The optometrist looked in the mirror,
Face sagged in wrinkles too twisted to map.
A voice came from the doorway:
“Remember the Gregors’ son is scheduled For noon.”
And he sscrolled the phoropter
Through its confusion of views.

Her hobbies include
Carrying four plastic boats
In only two hands.

Just like her mother
Juggling elastic lists
Keeping us afloat.

I don’t have the answer
other than to explain, using
yet another metaphor we poets
are so fond of using when
we can’t explain the inexplicable.

It’s like peeling back layers
of onions, seeking the truth
to unlock mysteries even
a skeleton key can’t answer

and peeling onions is stinky
work. My eyes fill with tears
stinging from stench, I cut
my finger, blood clots under
paper towel, a gift you don’t
know you have until you have

a son whose blood doesn’t clot.
Hemophiliac child is no joke
to a mom who wants to write
a poem that makes you laugh,
yet I’m failing since none
of this is funny except for tone
of irreverence only a survivor

can adopt yet who isn’t a survivor?
The dead, I tell you. Those who
die don’t survive to write a poem
intending to elicit laughs I still
won’t hear from the audience

so let’s return to that onion, a
yellow onion I choose from mesh
bag, testing its firmness, cutting
first, each end, then down the center
to peel back brown layers that
aren’t even yellow before I dice
the way I watch chefs on videos
with knife skills I don’t have. Remember?

I told you I bled but it’s not so bad
I require stitches. Just a basic paper
towel, not even a band-aid because
now that my son is grown and flown
the nest, who the fuck knows
where I keep band-aids?

Task at hand, each layer
peeled enough to reach sweet
core, reward for getting that far
but I wish I could say peeling
back the layers of my childhood
only elicited a small cut on a finger
and the skeleton key is enough to
lock away memories I still have
to push away, even at my age and
let me tell you, my bones creaking
are enough evidence I’m getting old.

I wish I was mature enough to forgive
but the truth is bitterness and hatred,
contempt and anger are left in the wake
of a break-up I suffered months ago,
even though I remind myself what happened
in the past, even one day in the past is as much
the past as years ago and the onion isn’t sweet
enough to staunch the blood and stop the tears
but poems are enough to write instead.