Grind
by Haley Winans
After Diane Suess
I drove all the way to Bluff City and ditched Old
Bay for dry rubs and steamed
crabs for BBQ. Now blues is my water
and soul is my soap. I bathe in the lightshow
bridge that looks like icicles melting
over the Mississippi. A little girl bikes in circles
carving currents around me, rusty chain flickering
like cicada wing symphonies. I prop my bones up
against a pole and let the flow of a lone
guitar player pull my tear ducts apart like pork
shoulders. I was born in brackish, now I’m lathered
in landlocked but I can still cup my hands and collect
rain and spit whispers of prayers. My balding bunny
is peppered in fleas so I coat him in Dawn
and tweeze the ones burrowing into his feathery
patches of fur. He stares at me like a wide-eyed chicken all pink
and plucked. It feels like a baptism; a baby sitting stoic
and naked, not knowing what we are trying to protect
it from. This moment is far more momentous
than a monument, like I am dipping my toes
into something indescribably precious, a mirror-clear cistern
that looks bottomless even at the bottom. I keep passing
all these ghost town playgrounds cloaked in ginkgos
on my way to the vet and I can’t help but think we can filter
out all the fuck shit of the past with a fine-tooth
comb, squish the lifesuckers between our pruned
fingertips, and stop restlessly itching for relief.
Haley is a poet, artist, and gardener from Annapolis, Maryland. She has poetry published in Slipstream, the Scarab Journal, Red Cedar Review, The Shore Poetry, collages in 45th Parallel, and upcoming poems in Gutslut Press. She is a University of Memphis MFA candidate. She is a founding co-editor of Beaver Magazine and assistant poetry editor of The Pinch Journal. In all her realms of interest, she is heavily influenced by the intrinsic connection between humans and the environment, and the impacts they have on each other. In her undergrad, she studied Environmental Studies and Creative Writing, with specific focuses on environmental justice, sustainable agriculture, and poetry.