GRANDMOTHER
Georgia was hot and she was so small
she slept inside a dresser drawer.
Hair like gossamer, legs like a bird’s.
When she was eight a movie was eight
cents. When she was eight she watched
her brother kill her sister
with a metal license plate.
Now she is flesh folded heavy
against a chair, TV flashing
pale on the trailer’s walls.
Her pictures, pills, jewelry
surrounding her like treasure.
—from Rattle #72, Summer 2021
Tribute to Appalachian Poets
__________
Prairie Moon Dalton: “I grew up in the gorgeous and harrowing backdrop of North Carolina Appalachia. My days were blessed with the ripeness of the surrounding natural world and simultaneously marred by generational poverty and trauma. Through surreal and overlapping imagery, my poems aim to observe and make sense of life as it moves against the complicated framework of the American South. My speakers question what we can keep of our regional inheritance, and what we must leave behind.” (web)
