A clutch of waitresses zigzagged their way across
Cracker Barrel after my grandmother chucked
the bread basket’s contents onto the floor.
Everything is cold! Her criticism, same one
as years before when she stacked my grandfather’s
bleached and ironed handkerchiefs
on the front stoop, rekeyed the locks. I never
waitressed but I manned our town’s jewelry store,
an education in the layaway drawer as ladies
came to peek at their treasures, Don’t tell
my husband. By fall, they’d all be looped
in yellow gold and peridot. By fall,
the sweetgum trees’ spiked pods blanketed
the under-canopy. As a kid I’d climb the stone-
sharp arcing limbs to collect cicada shells,
then sink those hooked and hollow claws
into my cousin’s perfect curls (curls all the boys
would pull). While she writhed I skipped away
delighted. The inside thing with still-wet
wings and oil-slick eyes clicking its song.
Rebecca Morton’s work appears in Sugar House Review, RHINO, TriQuarterly, Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, Pacifica Literary Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal, and holds an MFA in poetry from Eastern Washington University. Rebecca lives in Chicago with her wife and children.
