I yield to the ache that overtakes me 
in this fallow field, red clay dust, 
the shattered bones of brittle cornstalks, 
seedless tassels tossed by the wind.
 
My body remembers you in fragments, 
echoes the way it arched and let go,
fingering the drawstrings of each other’s fleece 
before mashing mouths, feeding                                
 
our hunger in beds of spring seedlings,
shadows stretched long, a residue
of stars and blue dawn inching in, the tone 
of finale opening our flesh, our spines.
 
Cool morning air, the color of yarrow, 
tingled tangled arms, and finches 
pricked themselves again and again 
to gorge on berries deep within the thicket.
 
There is a fragrance where skin meets time,
lulling as the wilt of golden hour light.
I memorize bird calls and wild herbs,
hang tallow, sow millet, as if winter is a crop.
 
I dream you shirtless among the jagged roots, 
sharp as outlines of loss, sing with the nighthawk 
to defer the dawn, wait.
I have grown to crave even your silence.

I mean no disrespect when I say, 
during the Great Depression
Eastern Kentucky was a sundered area.
Surrounded by mountains and waterways,
no easy access in or out, nor any proper 
education, until the WPA employed 
our grandmothers to packsaddle 
literacy to the underserved.
 
This would be the only good thing 
coal would do for Kentucky, 
coal and the Presbyterians,
donating books and endowment,
twenty-eight dollars a month to any woman 
with a horse or mule, and the spunk
to stand up for progress, brave the weather, 
backwaters and hollers, to deliver emancipation
by means of bound dissertation.
 
You need to understand, this was Appalachia, 
just before the war to end all wars.
Only women of disrepute were considered 
working women by the church.
Christian women labored in the kitchen and fields,
birthed, prayed, died in them, albeit 
many Christian women were taught to read,
if for no other reason than the Lord’s word
could be used to hold her back.
 
But this was the New Deal and all bets were off.
Imagine my grandmother, top of her head 
barely level with the saddle’s front rigging dee, 
flaming red hair, a brand of sass all her own.
Packing up at the Pine Mountain Settlement School,
Harlan County, creek beds as roads, 
on foot, single file, across crag and clifftop, 
sleeping in barns or lean-tos against the cold.
Deliberate as any lineman or mail carrier, 
every treatise she carried, a nugget 
of gold inside her saddlebags.

You wake one morning to see a family member 
reflected in your face, a turn of lip, a twitch,
a trick to make what’s absent present.
Younger, I thought I saw my grandmother’s 
pluck inside my eyes. I adopted her cackle, 
love of heifers and cornbread. Her orneriness 
came slippery even on ordinary days. 
 
My mother’s eyes were green,
mine are not, as if the biology of color 
could be an explanation for our rifts.
But my brow is like hers now, flat, 
grim, more pensive, where once 
mine had a playful upward arch.
 
The best photo I have of my mom 
is as a toddler, standing in a barnyard. 
Coal-black hair, eyes locked 
on the camera’s lens, mended cotton 
dress and ankle socks, shoes caked 
in mud and pig shit, her left arm 
draped around a Bluetick’s neck, 
her face already showing signs 
of how worry affected her.
 
She did try to be my mama, 
but always seemed to make choices 
that were not so much decision 
as the least worse option.
She would go thin, sleep a lot.
Then came the drugs.
It took me years to soften 
the edges of my bitterness.
 
A few months before she passed, 
I took her driving along the rural roads 
where she was raised. I hoped returning, 
would spark memories, fill her with light, 
the way the heat of day warms the bones.
 
Instead, she bucked and scratched, 
straining the seat belt, eyes like a rabid hound, 
words like matchsticks struck along the dashboard. 
My broken brow quivered in the rearview, 
her howls crawled the air like fire.