By: Kelsey A. Solomon
I once knew a sandwich artist with poems hidden like lettuce in his snaggletooth, where verses fermented blueberry beer, American Spirits, onyx Volkswagen emissions, and I topped a trail on his lips that may still taste like cinnamon, a siren’s call, or was it the teal polka dot sundress I trimmed for the reading, where Holy the Firm guarded periwinkle suede, the seat he saved for me, to later massage his back and legs once doors closed, and I opened the book to experience God. I hear him now, you’re cataloguing your darlings, as he’d knot gelled curls along his temple, where a slow grimace formed by the chaos of my vowel’s music, I hear the twang, a soundtrack to his climb from the Tennessee oaks to Oregon pines, I hope, where in his kitchen he collects more poems, all while I piece him together with notes left in books that once rested crooked in a seat that he saved for his wife.
Kelsey A. Solomon teaches writing and literature at Walters State Community College in Hamblen County, Tennessee. Her most recent publications in poetry can be found in Appalachian Heritage, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel: Appalachia Under 30, and the Anthology of Appalachian Writers.
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