by Michelle Yadrick
Tell me about your heart’s home
where your seasick grand-grandpa landed
and took an American name
so that someday his children, their children, and you
could reap what he had sown
My grand-grandpa’s mountains endured cuts for mines
and our miners endured cuts for execs
I can taste the difference
between Allegheny and Ohio tap water
but not fine wines
Traveled feet and wandering eyes
Urban legend to my folktale
you quenched my thirst for knowledge
unshelled me in crowds and
undressed my old disguise
I’m halfway between milk teeth and beast
Hell, what could I ever teach you?
How to read the cycles of the moon
stop fearing your shadow
tell when a ginkgo will lose its leaves?
I can’t imagine ginkgoes and gibbous
being of much use
to your great ideas and grand plans
Then again, these things amuse you
I just bide the time they give us
It’s not my job to keep you here
We both know I can’t be planted out
and this isn’t exactly the land of opportunity
unless you’re a Texan fracker or a pothole
If not my job, I’ll volunteer
When you first touched Appalachian stone
what haunted hill-song made you stay?
I listen closely, humming and hoping
that someday I will hold you flush to my heartbeat
like the first out-of-town book I ever borrowed
on interlibrary loan
Hometown
I used to pick up insects with my bare hands
and wade for crawdads
Now my hands are hospital raw
and I’m supposed to say “crayfish”
This is the place where
I skinned both my knees
You fell and got bruised
like fruit from the tree
There are lots of berries only birds can eat
We’re animals, too, with very special adaptations
We’re the only animal that can
make fun of itself
This is the porch where
you did trick-or-treat
But the ghosts I saw
were not in white sheets
Did your mom check your candy
the way my mom did?
Or did you gobble it up rotten
before her busy hands could get to it?
This is the office where
they checked my eyes
They said mine won’t make it
to age forty-five
E, F, P, T, O…
I know beauty when I see it
but my Snellen chart ends long
before I can spot genuineness
This is the pavement
we colored with chalk
before I lost my marbles
and you lost your rocks
There’s an old park around here
where the gnats and mosquitos
were drawn to the carbon dioxide
in our tired breath
This is the church where
they scrubbed off my sins
where some of us end
and far more begin
We sat through the whole thing and reek of incense
You’re named for a saint and, I, an angel
but I just didn’t live up to it
after I shed my plaid
Stick out your tongue
and scrunch up your nose
The wound over you
hurts worse when it’s closed
Well I’ve talked with lots of people
about everything just short of you, and I learned
the single most dangerous human condition
is loneliness
Hold my hands, dance with me,
One, two, and fro
Your kiss gave me fireblight
I finally let go