of the last great love poem on earth
so Hannah let me sing
your name through the blue distance
of the Sequatchie Valley.
My heart, the Cumberland Plateau.
Your love, a summer thunder rolling in.
Hannah, take my hand
and step into the steam rising
off these worn mountains
these hunkering doorstops of Appalachia.
Hannah, the people of this valley are a shimmer
above the four-lane, an oil-slick scent
The prayer in the upraised arms
of a skinny boned kid yelling
Hey, watch’is!
and driving off a cliff.
A plunking tune playing
from the jewelry box of his ribs
hooked on a tree all summer
til winter
come to show us its bones.
Trenna Sharpe grew up in Tennessee. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in WMN.Zine, Homology, Five:2:One Mag, The Tangerine, and others. She has an MFA in Poetry from the Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She's currently working on a series of poems addressed to the comedian Hannah Gadsby.
