Planted by the Signs. Misty Skaggs
to my skin.
The tortoiseshell cat is satisfied
to sleep in the cradle of my legs,
crossed ankle to knee
like a man.
She’s making biscuits.
Needlepoint pricks
of practiced country cat claws
kneading my pale, doughy flesh.
The stray shepherd,
one eye sky blue and
the other mud brown,
is never satisfied.
But he missed me
when I ventured off the Ridge
and into town.
So he sits
as patient as he can manage
and I scratch his muzzle
and listen to the knock
of his tail on loose, front-porch
floorboards.
We sit in silence.
Except for the thump and the purr.
Except for the cardinal
screaming
“Wet dew! Wet dew!”
one last time
before the light breaks
the whole holler.
The Home Cemetery
We keep our dead
at the dead end
of a rutted gravel road.
Generations filed away
forever
in staggered rows.
They belong to me.
A birthright of last breath
And rotting body,
buried safely beneath
six feet of soil.
The dark soil
I came from.
Full grown and dirt poor.
This is my acreage.
Rich bottomland fertilized
by bone.
The cemetery floats,
a rounded island tethered
to the mountains
by creek-bed tombstones.
Dusted with broom sage.
Populated solely by lingering souls
and a stray, persistent
peacock
trespassing on my land,
picking his hungry way
over my graves.
Churched
All the old men
from the Beartown
Church of God
call me Sissy.
There’s Ligey
and Whirley
and Johnny
and my Mamaw’s cousin
who found Jesus
after he beat cancer
a couple years back.
They’re working men
of God.
They reminisce
about their drinking days
and trade around trucks
and stories about bad kids
and worsening eyesight.
When they think I’m eighteen,
they grin at the possibilities.
When they find out I’m thirtysomething,
the grins get a little sad
and soft around the edges,
at the thought
of the waste
of a good pair
of breeding hips.
I’d Melt
I want the kind of man
who wants the kind of woman
who keeps bacon grease.
He needs to notice
how it’s so much more
than stingy sustenance.
It’s ritual and relish,
the satisfaction of golden-brown biscuits.
He has to see
how it’s more
than just grease.
It’s gumption
and tradition
strained into a coffee cup
passed down through generations.
I need a man to recognize
the kind of love worth saving.
I long for a love
that holds up
like cast iron.
Stacking Firewood
Sticks of seasoned oak
smack the bottom of my wagon
as I whittle away at the woodpile.
Bend and heave, grunt and let fly.
I suck down the coming snow
and fill my lungs so deep it stings.
I find my rhythm,
sweating steam in the cold sunshine.
Bend and heave, grunt and let fly.
I lose it again when I spot a patch
of purple moss worthy of a poem
and take it as a sign,
reward for hard work
turned to smoke.
Oatmeal Cookie Communion
The layered skirttail
brushing my plump, pink,
baby cheek
is plaid.
Skinny strips of harvest orange
and goldenrod yellow
pen in blocks of pea green.
The geometric fields and fences
are flip-flopped.
Planted beneath a swirl of paisley sea.
A