Middle American Girls

We grew in the furrow of our mother’s brow,
by the light of her white knuckles — squeezing
out what innocence remained.
We learned to contort and dance
to the rhythm of rattling worlds —
of Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

We learned to rap over melodies
composed of trains, pickup trucks,
rage, inequality.
Poverty declared in every key.

We learned to pray
until we choked
on the dark corners
of suffocation.

We learned to maneuver
along the curves
of moody roads
in lemon cars
with scented trees
swinging in the rearview
we flipped off.

We learned to pinch copper pennies
until the ghost —
the banshee — screamed
between our baby teeth.

We rolled dimes
while neighbors rolled weed.
Changed donuts
with skinny teenage arms.
We learned to hold our bats
like war heroes —
never to concede,
never to say
oh poor, pitiful, or me.

We were the girls who made
uncool vintage cool again.
We’re artistically snobbish —
draped in layers
of intuitive feeling
and chaotic upbringing.

We don’t answer
when the credit card company rings,
reminding us not to reach
beyond our means.

Show me the parents
who didn’t burden their children
with the guilt of being,
with the cost of breathing.

We are the daughters
of those who didn’t hide
their worry
or their thin pocketbooks.

Mothers and fathers
of me, my friends,
our middle American dream.
We did not grow up naïve.
We grew up
Middle American —
and kind of snotty.

Threadbare

Twisted. Wrung.
She sobbed—
dignity pouring
like sweat down a burdened spine,
hung in the breathless heat
of summer.

Tears dripped,
watering weeds,
draining the seams
that once held her.
What remained:
a limp, wrinkled thing—
a crumpled rag
of who she’d been.

Never again
his sallow skin.

She let heartache boil
beneath the pitiless sun
into anger:
he might leave her.
Alone.

She rooted through wind,
September rain,
December snow.
Tried to scream—
All will froze.
Silent. Still.
Her fury cooled.

And in April’s hush,
she bent, as light toward weeds
splitting earth—
wild heather blooming.

A spider plucked silver strings.
A jay sang her story.

Under a sapphire sky,
her form began to swell.
Her shadow swayed
with a daffodil
rising
from sorrow’s soil.

The world—
for her—
blossomed again.

Not the same,
but softened.

She does not have to be loved
to love.

The First Kill

Drawing back her bated breath,
muffling the rumble of a sunken belly,
Annie aimed—
still, squinting through the sights,
atop the highest hill
of her mind.

There, nestled in the clearing—
striking in its golden coat,
half-hidden in dead leaves
and the brittle limbs of fall—
the white-tailed doe.

Grazing through weeds
at delicate hooves.
Too thin.
But she’ll have to do.

One step closer—
on dry-split earth
sent a crackle
through the wood.

Annie’s stare—fixed,
like her daddy’s days before
he died.
Nostrils flared.
Two hearts
beat against the silence.

No mercy.
The lifeless grass. No give.
The crop yield—dead.
If God is unforgiving,
so she would be,
to that tan, unflinching beast.

They were both starving.
She aimed high.
Calculated: 120 yards,
as the black crow flies—
above her, taunting.
Watching it all unfold,
daring Annie to give it a shot,
and try.
Her mother says:
Aim higher.

She exhaled.
Squeezed her left eye.

And stood very still
atop the highest hill
of her mind.

She is Eighteen Today. She Will Change the World.

Plopped down, without a say in the matter—
by God, or by evolutionary phenomenon (you decide)—
a girl from flyover country
sits cross-legged in a metal chair
with uneven legs.

It rocks slightly.
Click-clack, tick-tock.
Indecisive.
Unsatisfied.
She empathizes.

She too is disturbed
by the limitation of choices.
The rhythm mimics the white clock on the wall.
Click-clack. Tick-tock.
There it goes—
a waste of time.

She picks up her pen.
Stares down the task.
She must choose a side—
as one might pick a favorite color,
if the rainbow had only two.

Daltonic isn’t an option.
The nurse once said her vision was twenty-twenty.
But her stepdad lost his job,
and their insurance.
Now her checkups are a decade overdue.

She sees clearly, though—
the rippling shades of red and blue.
Her mind drifts
to the yellow Stratocaster
at the charity shop.

She worked every weekend
at the Dairy Queen
for four years—
until the pandemic slapped the world
across its polychromatic face.
She was let go without a thank you.
"Closing for good," they said.

Her high school counselor—
Ms. Hauser, always smelling of Seagram’s
since the breakdown—
tells her she is gifted.
That music is a path.

But she’d never take advice
from someone who reminded her
of Aunt Irma’s Sunday slurs.
Never.

Still, she’s fond
of the idea that purpose
might lie somewhere—
something that honors her intellect,
her intuition,
her rage.

She dreams of never
serving another Oreo Blast
out of necessity.

Today, her teacher is handing out
voter registration forms,
while rearranging knick-knacks
in perfectly chaotic lines.

Delilah—
named after an oldie about lovers torn apart—
turns eighteen today.

She wears her favorite shirt.
Threadbare sleeves, missing button,
faded into a navy hue
that smells of breeze and Oklahoma dirt.
Low maintenance.
Earthy.
Like she hopes to be perceived.

Outside,
for the first time this year,
a chorus of cicadas begins—
creatures who’ve waited seventeen years
underground
to sing.

Much like her.

She sees boys
hurling rocks in a field—
perhaps at a frog, or an injured bird.
Animals.
Beyond them,
a rust-colored pond,
like the clay-stained hands
of dirt-poor people
who dug this town from red soil.

She blinks.
Returns to the form in front of her.
Remembers:
pick a side.
Pick a color.
Pick a corner if it’s wrong.
Hide.

She imagines
living in the middle—
but what if no middle exists?
What if she’s knocked up
by a mad stranger,
like her cousin was—
scarred at thirteen
and gone by fourteen?

What if she wants to believe
that what she earns,
she should keep?

Two-sided irony
on a one-way street.

She folds a slip of paper,
slides it under the wobbly chair leg.
Steadies herself.
Whispers:

“Focus.”

And with her wandering mind still untamed,
Delilah
picks a side.

When I was Young

It must have been
I couldn’t see the forest—
Too naive,
too hard to please.

Now I sit here wondering
if this wise midlife I lead
is just another evergreen.

If there is a forest
that exists at all for me to see,
or if my wisdom waters
just another sapling tree.