Annette Sisson

Deep in Milkweed

My grandfather shuffled

his family to a few

sloping acres he’d wrangled

in the country, a crudely

framed shack—shallow

footings, foundation,

studs, flimsy roof.

No insulation 

or running water, a single

woodstove, old

sheets for bedroom walls.

He’d thought to finish

the house by fall, collapsed

into pneumonia, lost

his job. Winter crept in.

His sons lined

the tarpaper shell with newsprint.

They slept in mittens,

coats over sweaters, three

to a mattress. Between

coughs, he swore he’d plumb

the place, put up

drywall when spring swept away

the ice. In the warm

seasons, he prayed each

day for easy

breath, died before the parched

leaves dropped.

His children, angular and thin,

rambled the hill

deep in milkweed. Sharp

pods scraped  

their skin as they scanned for monarchs.

Tufts of floss

released, ribboned the empty

heat, the sky.

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Annette Sisson has poems in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust and Moth, Cloudbank, Lascaux Review, Blue Mountain Review, Cider Press Review, Tupelo’s Milkweed Anthology, and others. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books in October 2024; her first book was published by Glass Lyre in May 2022. Her poem “Fog” won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s 2019 poetry prize; her work has also placed in Frontier New Voices, The Fish Anthology, Lascaux Review’s poetry prize, and many other contests. She has received multiple nominations for The Pushcart Prize or Best of the Net. https://annettesisson.com

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Erica Reid

How to Skin a Deer

Your guess

is as good

as mine – I

am the baby

of soft city

slickers, but

my papaw

would have

known. He

grew up in

Appalachia,

helped me

with my

leaf projects

when mom

shrugged.

I failed

to ask him

enough. I

was never

tough, winced

when he

brandished

hot tweezers

to pull my

splinters.

Papaw,

can you hear?

I need to

skin a deer.

I want to

feed myself

with my own

knife. And cry

for the choice

I have made.

Mule deer

wander

my yard

unafraid, under

trees I am certain

have names.

---

Erica Reid’s debut collection Ghost Man on Second won the 2023 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published by Autumn House Press earlier this year. Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more. ericareidpoet.com

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Kimberly Ann Priest

Ecofeminism

Is it an age thing? Or a money thing? You see,

I’ve forgotten the romance of berries.

The round, full fruit of desire

en route to my mouth in the pickers’ rows

at a local fruit farm where we pay our forty dollars

to the woman at the window who hands us

two empty green cartons and tells us

we can hitch a golf cart ride to the rows,

pointing. Mothers take children berry picking

often. I did. Once, a cash poor mother,

I was happy to go picking because it was

so cheap. We’d have berries for days for jam

or to freeze. I look at you surprised these cartons

are twenty dollars each and decide I will eat

my weight in berries, a handful for the carton,

a handful for my body. We wander our row,

pulling from bushes as I pivot to face you

and fill my mouth with blueberries,

and you do it too—the reason they’ve charged us

forty dollars. Women are the best, you like

to tell me, and I’m grateful for the romance,

mere romance though it be, compelling us

to linger much longer in our row stockpiling

mouths in season as though the world

might totter on its axel, hysterical with cold.

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Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press), Floralia (Unsolicited Press), and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications). An assistant professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University, her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, and Birmingham Poetry Review. She lives, with her husband, in Maine.

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