You taught me how to drink
By: Kelly Vance
In defiance of better judgment
In memory of too many condolences
In nightgowns and ball gowns
On the terry cloth edge of apathy’s bathrobe
On the wagon on a well-beaten path to anywhere else
On the eve of future regrets
Like a thirsty supplicant succulent empty of stores
Like a whale, bloated and drying on the beach
Like hummingbirds from the red death trough
When the sky grows close and vocal
When the grass screams blades-up below the mower
When you aren’t here and also when you are
In the grasp you have on everything you touched,
like me and my reflections now you’re gone.
Kelly Vance is a graduate student in Eastern Kentucky University’s MFA program in creative writing, the Bluegrass Writers Studio, where she received the Emerging Writers Award for poetry in 2021. In selecting Vance
for this award, Jen Currin wrote, “Vance’s voice is at turns humorous, tender, elegiac.” In addition to writing
poetry, Kelly has a passion for encouraging young poets and is the Chair of Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Annual Student Poetry Contest (2019-2023).