Poetry, Alicia Wright
If your mother had cooked more, had secreted
yellowed recipe cards into a box with your shoes
when you left home, you would be different.
You do not think this. I think this, watching
your breath bloom hot on the mirror. You see
yourself winterfed, invulnerable —
you are a rawboned healthy, raised on kitchen-
stove potatoes and salt-burdened garden beans
pulled from a front yard plot and I could
knuckle into the flats between your ribs for it.
I might try; I could know you that way.
Alicia Wright is from Appalachia and received an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Her poetry has appeared in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Kestrel, The Cape Rock, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. You can keep up with her at www.aliciawright.ink.