Oh Unadilla, Nebraska, I think of you,
old homestead to the women
in my family, your cows and cornfields
and bank foreclosures, your broken
banisters and cellars lined with jars
of slippery fruit suspended in the dark,
of great grandma left with all those children
to feed, cleaning latrines on trains
full of businessmen and cons. Thank
God for prohibition and the stove-savvy
females we turned out to be, the cooking
and scrubbing whores, sucking it up
like kitchen sinks, slick as coffee cans
full of grease. If anyone could make
the moon shine in a tub it was us. Who else
was going to feed them? Babies in their hand-
me-down dungarees, crooked teeth
and braids with siblings left to fill in
for who went missing, left to spoon
meal onto hungry tots’ tongues, landing
the grainy lumps like lopsided planes
in abandoned fields, mouths that swallowed,
stayed stuck. Then the runtiest ordered
to sit on porcelain plinths with timers
and firm instructions not to budge until buzzers
signaled a turd gone swimming. All this
so mama could make fire somewhere else
out of what she yanked from the earth, mashing
it to burnt liquid. What's deemed wicked.
What people will pay for when they’re dying for it.
*This poem was a semi-finalist in the SWWIM For-the-Fun-of-It Contest.