KATE POLAK

Trickster Gods of Appalachia

My father made the light chime, stuttering slips of mirror spinning
  in the pear tree, each passing headlight backscattering, before we strayed
along the tracks, putting liquor bottles in plastic bags to loft glass in the dead
  branches on the plot up the block where the crack house burned down.

Igniting weavings, we spit on the bait and spike it on the hook, loving
  these small things by which we draw other small things
to our ravening mouths; tucking away what’s felled or fold, salt stinging our eyes
  when we’ve got a nail prying the last Mason lid
to pop the last jar and a crooked finger plunged to the fruit within.

Blueberry jam on buckwheat pancakes, my uncle strums, his voice
  rich yet reedy, and our encampments house both family and familiars,
what we’ve found in furred and finned beings, waiting for whatever comes
  calling and pounds its iron stakes into the dirt we are

to make shelter. All of us smoke. None of us care that it will kill
  us. There’s plenty of killing that has no crossroad
deal on which we can hang our personal lore. My mother bends sustenance
  into revelation, my folks let their girl be her own kind of demon,
but made sure I wouldn’t love what didn’t shed my skin, make me new.

Spent well, love can be kin to fear, makes us behave, makes us think like
  we've been anything but animal. Or is it the pivot point between
chaos and entropy? The husk of a ground cherry held to the light,
  tart, gamey, green, bursting in your mouth, makes my lips

remember things perhaps better left gone. Reminds me of the one played
  Loki along my sleeve, where we desecrated the edge of a lake
and I couldn’t make his sparking fingers into a steady blaze. Adored him
  anyways. Or the one, drunk, told me “I need this next beer
as much as I need you.” Unkind, but probably true.

Tongues will linger on what tells them whatever hope had
  chromed, and as the storm rolls through, above, inside,
lining sills with acorns to steer away the killing flash, somewhere out there
  the carnivals and boxcars are waiting. I’m trying to work against

a certain amount of symmetry, make it ladders and winding
  paths. There is nothing but a boy and a girl necking in a muscle car, there is
nothing we couldn’t have written better versions of, there is no way
  to feel that isn’t through the flare of a gaze, and laughing, now, at the bright tooth
waxing in the grey sky which found me alone on my way home, after

you said nothing was there. It was always there. What little magics: never spilling
  your coffee, no snags on the clothes, always finding the good
parking spot, being one of those folks who—so charmed—is always
  on time, because no one minds the wait. There are sleights

that cast us into the blue to be some other man’s portent. We’re everywhere.
  When we were soft clay banks begging hands to shape us,
I slid down us and chuted into the creek, lazily spinning in a current
  that didn’t have nothing good in mind, didn’t mind at all, didn’t have a mind
at all, can’t love that element, lets itself fall. My cousin took what that bank

gave us, formed it into those beasts in the forest, fired them in the kiln,
  is the origin where two axes meet. I, meanwhile, burn blood into ink,
wondering if I ever did a right thing. My aunt’s careful hand measuring
  the lives of what we salvage. It never had to be

anything: the patient labor of dipping wick in wax to make a longer
  flame, knotted shoulders of the woman tanning hides, the delight
of that forge, killing the fire to better frame the story from his shadow
  lamp. I take the gun in my hand and cock it, I twine my fingers around
the bow and nock it. I strip down to the least of things, and dance

in the ways no one taught me. It is hard to return what you are, and harder still
  to divine the might-be’s: the true mirror that fails to reverse, shows you
as you are when you’re perceived. I’d rather not know myself as others know me.
  Can’t even remember how I stuttered through what burns of all

I’d thought to tell you. When we were known well enough to have bodies,
  when those names we go by were hulls the tongue worries in a back tooth,
the flood came, the Ohio breaching its banks to meet me where I was then
  and make the powers steadily growing in our hands all seem briefly small
again: fine hammer on dulcimer string, thick thumb guiding the thrown pot,

the plots of all those legends I’ve sought to body back into being: a man
  returning from whatever’s next and carrying off her that makes the bloom,
gasping when the fence that lines the graveyard passed, and lordy, to love
  what’s shift in atmosphere: never again knowing what I could have been with-

out the myth that may be. My ordered world, made so to keep what I want
  and fear at heel: open water, the wilds, whatever yawns to make the thunder
come. I should’ve learned much better as a young thing: god, supplicant, and
  of course, offering, that no one ever makes their way out of the woods.
This life is good, but short. I can live. Tell me the story where I do.