2013 First Prize
On Friday morning
I drive Aunt Alé to her job
where she decorates cakes
for little more than the cab fare
it takes to get there.
She does not cry
in the car as she did
the night before—when she
cooked her famous stew
for us, when the kitchen counter
was strewn with garlic cloves,
ginger thumbs, and finger chilis,
the legs and arms and cheeks
of Kentucky steer—but
sits straight-faced as we
shoot across country roads and
pass burned-out schoolhouses.
I imagine she is
praying to the holy
temple of my uncle’s colostomy,
because she knows as well as I
how even the strong people
tend to run out into a pool of
unwound gossamer, a roll
of ticker tape that stops ticking
sooner or later.
Finally I ask her if she
is doing OK, and I know what
we both consider: her peeling
trailer home and the medical
expenses, the year she was homeless
because my uncle’s father
didn’t want a gook in the house.
Tonight when I tell Aunt Alé
good-bye, I will hug her small shoulders
and feel the world shifting its weight
from foot to foot,
as if she were the only one of my family
who knows it, and then I will realize again
her life is not just a series of
unfortunate events but something
more than I could ever understand—
how she knows these rolling
hills of haunted-blue, the cold water and
hollow-bellied barns, and
the way everyone who stumbles
across the veined edges of Lake Cumberland
seems to find some kind of light
in her part of the world.
