Far from it for me to favor the chicken or the egg.
I wouldn’t eat either until I was five
when daddy finally coaxed me into sharing
in his mustard shenanigans. It became a
contest to dip scrambled origins
in radioactive yellow blobs, slopped
on a Styrofoam plate, eventually stained
with enough turmeric to soothe
any achy bone. I wouldn’t know
the difference between a grilled wing
or a sizzling bowl of breakfast, chewed
into soppy wads until my jaws wrenched
down from enough salt to turn
a hungry kid into a grin
or a gnashing-of-teeth supper
for two. He and I—frozen to our seat cushions—
would tell each other the same lie
as we licked our fingers and forks for penance,
drowning out the whys and the lettuce.
*
October Heat Wave
He ate the deviled eggs
even when muggy air hung like spears
along the kitchen ceiling, where ultraviolent beams
caught every speck of paprika melting
into their oval, chipped frames,
and he didn’t mind the driftwood
along the lake where he fished
because line was cheaper then,
and I gravitate to rotten things
and crimson,
especially at night when the water
became a chalkboard for our busy days
and maples shadowed our irritations
like idle starships,
safety nets to catch his voice
that knew, by heart,
a yolky song about beginnings,
and I didn’t mind because
his raspy baritone was free
and leaves bled for
my joy.
*
Ars Poetica, Gynoecium
I begin to swell and stiffen at the pith
of heat beneath navel, so I
avoid diurnal glances that suspect a parasite,
nurture you in secret by lamplight
through pilfered metaphors,
doubt my readiness for birth.
Sure of my judgment, I pursue the hope monger,
who prescribes advice, a dissolvent,
assures me that I can force you to die.
He administers a shot of confidence,
to wait a day or two
settle in a safe space
ruminate on his candy
between lip and gum
until I feel the sickness.
The cramps strangle you in metronomic rhythm,
and you fall down my grooves in streams
onto the icy linoleum.
I wake to you itching for vamoose
and edit you into a puzzle,
but you float dead on the page,
a hushed dithyramb to white space.
I can’t bring myself to flush.
Born and raised in Hamblen County, Tennessee, Kelsey A. Solomon teaches composition and literature for Walters State Community College and serves on the editorial boards for the Mildred Haun Review and the Tennessee Mosaic. She holds a Master of Arts in English from East Tennessee State University and a Bachelor of Arts in English (Creative Writing) and Philosophy from Carson-Newman University, where her irrevocable union with poetry truly began. Her poems have appeared in Black Moon Magazine, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, most which she's written in someone else's kitchen or in the Notes app on her phone when the muses demand.