some taverns use shotguns for door handles
For Jessica
you’re a vegetarian, and that’s where things got complicated at the Americana Holiday Spectacular. three dive bars in a tucked-in mining town, shafts sealed up after Nixon, lampposts still burning gas. avant-garde menus with two types of burger: cow or hog, pickles or none. sometimes fried food is just processed cheddar, but it comes from the same spitting oil vat as the animals, and you wouldn’t mix and match. i still don’t know how a bite-sized town budgets fireworks in December, or how the volunteer fire department times the lighting of the tree perfectly with the last big smoky bang, but fragile miracles happen everywhere. like how you married a hunter who makes his own jerky. like the way you lean into me when I say something funny.
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Kimberly Sailor, from Mount Horeb, WI, is the editor-in-chief of the Recorded A Cappella Review Board and author of the 2024 poetry chapbook “Holy Week in Cave Country” (Finishing Line Press). She has been a finalist for the Wisconsin People & Ideas poetry contest and the Hal Prize for poetry. Sailor serves her community as a volunteer firefighter/EMT. www.kimberlysailor.com
From The Archives: Published on This Day
- Four Poems by Dan Butler (2023)
- Two Poems by Jeffrey Thompson (2022)
- Only Now by Laura Ann Reed (2022)
- Two Poems by Elizabeth Savage (2021)
Kimberly, what an interesting arc this poem makes- I found myself transported into this non-inclusive space, which allows the entrance of all kind of nuanced meaning into the poem. I especially love the ending, which allows for the dissonance of disparate things to come together.