Stolen Gum
She has so much gum.
I have none.
Pained by my lack,
I count thirteen sticks
in that pink
Extra pack:
shiny foil tips make my
fingers twitch. I
skirt temptation, chasing
through the kitchen, trailing
tutus—to outside,
seeking freedom:
Spear Stream,
trampoline,
garden packed with crisp
green beans. But I dash
back, snatch that fat
pack. One touch
and I taste relief. Above,
the Elvis clock waggles
his hips. The King
feels my need. And only he
sees me slip:
just one silver stick.
Silly girl,
you think you’re hiding
your hand, hiding
that gum, running
to the bathroom, first,
then feigning
thirst. You return
from my kitchen,
refreshed. But when
you roll close to me
on the trampoline,
your whispers smell
sweet:
not the yellow-egg sulphur
of my water,
no bold whiff of our
garlicky lunch. Nor can
crabapple season,
weeks away, account
for that cloying
bubblegum scent
on your breath.
Two decades on, as I drag
myself up
to Step Nine,
into the blinding shine
of Rigorous Honesty,
I see Caitlin’s
pink-cheeked face,
that stolen gum,
first. Why this small thing,
before uglier indiscretions:
lying through my teeth
driving only while drinking
selling coke to children
selling my soul for love
from coast to coast?
Perhaps Elvis, in his eternal
temporal wisdom, hinted
at what was to come:
me, holding drink, pipe, life
in my shaking hand,
already tasting the burn
in my throat?
Fire in the Hole
I hear the Jeep before I smell it.
I smell exhaust before I see it.
Before he sees me—before I know it—
I’m horizontal, ducking low
down below the windshield sight line,
one knee on the seat, the other
leg outstretched, just hidden
behind the unfurled wing of driver door.
I can almost taste the scratched leather on my gearshift
before the rising tide of fear catches in my throat,
creeps up my windpipe,
tugs at my tonsils,
trauma souring taste buds on the back of my tongue.
Even the tang of fresh-cut grass is no match
for this metallic panic the sound
of an old engine unfurls in me—
and only in this place. My mother’s house.
Her lawn. Her gardens.
Her perfect front porch
with its worn boards, grooved from years of zealous sweeping.
Where neither the eternal pack of dogs,
nor my mother’s love,
nor my own malignant bravado
could keep me safe.
When not at her writing desk, Quincy Gray McMichael stewards her farm, Vernal Vibe Rise, on Moneton ancestral land. Her writing—both creative nonfiction and poetry—has been published in Yes! Magazine, The Dewdrop, Open: A Journal of Arts and Letters, Greenbrier Valley Quarterly, and is forthcoming from Appalachian Review and Assay, among other publications. Quincy holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. She is a Contributing Editor at Good River Review and is completing a hybrid memoir that explores obsession and overwork through a blend of poetry and prose.
