Middle Aged Kentucky feels like:

The buzz of all of us
carrying home the deli packaged
limestone limbs, tasked with unwrapping
our jowl bacon potential,
useless alone, base for smoke.
Limited ingredients; just salt.

Always fearing the meat will turn
before we make it, the beans will burn
on our watch; How many southern bodies stand
as evidence aligned in wait
Longing in parking lots, in slow moving traffic
swallowed up by apathetic urgency on 75.

Heavy appetite to get “home” and hide
hungry for more than mountain mourning.  
Too tired to brew a future,
Freeze the meat again and sleep to dream of
sustaining dishes. The stuff of safe memories.
Grandma gardens. Enough hope to plan
for safe keeping. Mason jars in the dark
what it means to be hungry.

Where do you find southern living?