Planted by the Signs. Misty Skaggs

every imaginable

      blue hue

      worn thin with age,

      soft and semi-see-through.

      The loose skin of the leg

      shielded by the layers of cloth

      is the same.

      Translucent and shimmering

      like a clean, cotton sheet

      in the spring sunlight

      on the clothesline strung

      between maple trees out back.

      There’s a thick, curvy, muscled calf

      built up by farming

      family bottomland,

      tenderized by age and hard work,

      and finally gone to seed.

      Somewhere above the skirt

      and the housecoat

      and the apron

      and the swirl of color and texture—

      somewhere far above the vines

      of defined veins easy to trace

      with a four-year-old fingertip—

      there was a woman.

      A tender woman

      and a tender, twangy voice

      drifting down to me.

      Somewhere up there

      there were watery blue eyes

      and thick plastic glasses

      with even thicker lenses.

      And a loose white bun

      hovered above those

      with strands as thin and delicate

      as spider silk, escaping

      to brush across her wrinkled face.

      I stand to receive the homemade

      oatmeal cookie communion

      she hands down to me.

      Her pockets fill my vision and run over.

      Slips of paper scribbled

      with old-fashioned names

      like Vangeline

      and Isolene

      and Iva

      and Lovel.

      Horehound candy and sticky peppermints,

      white tufts of tissue paper

      and the crinkly, plastic wrapper

      protecting a plug of King B.

      Her face is blurry

      in my young memory

      but her kitchen is as clear

      as the strange shadows

      on faded linoleum.

      Shadows I liked to watch dance

      as I slid across the room

      dragging my butt over bumps

      and sinkholes settled

      into the floor

      of an old house in Soldier.

       Uncle Charlie Loves You

      I remember tired, washed-out women

      warning us young’uns

      with his name—

      “Uncle Charlie’s gonna come,

      gonna come all the way

      out here

      just to get you.”

      I remember we believed it.

      I remember the good ol’ boys

      rounding up a posse

      fueled by boredom

      and Pabst Blue Ribbon

      every damn time

      he went up for parole.

      He might get out,

      he might come home.

      No-Name Maddox,

      backwoods bastard,

      progeny of a prostitute

      with no paved streets to walk.

      He could’ve been one of them,

      with a Mamaw on Mauk Ridge.

      Might’ve been another nobody

      puffed up on Kentucky windage,

      bedding high school girls

      in the bed of a beat-up

      pickup truck

      saying,

      “I don’t know

      what somebody is.”

      Or maybe

      Uncle Charlie

      could’ve been a country preacher.

      A powerful, primitive Baptist

      running the church house like a family.

      A short feller filled

      plumb up to the brim

      with rural route righteousness,

      briar-hopping the pulpit

      instead of hitching to Haight-Ashbury.

      The Holy Spirit in his wild eyes

      instead of homicide.

      I know

      I hear Kentucky in his voice.

      Hiding in the space

      at the ends of words

      where consonants drop off

      and disappear.

       Jump Rope Jitters

      I’m still falling down.

      Like when I was in fourth grade

      and the worst in class at jumping rope.

      I can still feel my little kid skin connect

      with playground concrete

      and see the bright red ribbons of blood

      cutting a path to the cuff

      of my ruffled pastel socks.

      I can still feel loose gravel trapped

      right below the surface.

      Bits of rock worked their way out

      and left rough skin behind.

      I can hear the skim and skip

      and my heart speeds up to keep up.

      The matching scars on my knees itch

      as I lie awake at night.

      I know there’s no recess to dread tomorrow

      and I should be drifting gently

      toward a soft sleep, but my legs jerk

      and my belly bubbles up with bad nerves

      and somehow I’m still falling down.

       Crying Mad