In the News, December 31, 1980

The final day of the year before my sister is born,
two people die in a local gas station explosion that no one
can explain, as winter warms up her roar from the Ohio Valley
to overpower all the Northeast, and five Connecticut men,
employees of City Printing Co., go missing in a small plane
over Lake Michigan. Governor Milliken has signed new bills
into law to restructure Blue Cross Blue Shield,
a massive tax-exempt, non-profit health insurer created
forty-one years prior. “We made more progress in six days,”
says the Governor, “than we did in the past six years,”
addressing employee complaints concerning injured and laid-off
workers who weren’t receiving benefits, as well as employer
complaints of system abuse and expense. Still,
the sun will be shinning tomorrow morning, temperatures mild
even as energy audits roll out for home dwellers to cut
heating costs. Which is good because tonight we are getting
two to four inches of snow as bright Jupiter and Saturn cozy up,
appearing merely two moon-widths apart by pre-dawn
when you can view them if you want to. Next month,
Reagan will be our nation’s president, and I think my parents
are happy. A volcano has erupted in Vancouver, Washington,
and the Communist Party has announced to the Polish
that this new year will not be prosperous as the country
continues its path toward socialist development. There are deaths
on the streets of California again due to the introduction
of a new illicit drug that is not “White China,” but almost the same,
while X-rated gingerbread women and men are sold
at a shop in Maryland featuring prominent sex organs
as well as big smiles. They aren’t illegal so the Moral Majority
can’t do a damn thing to stop them being sold. What is it
my mother keeps saying? There’s nothing new under the sun.
The Beach Boys have a star in Hollywood now—been a band
twenty years. Bright Jupiter and Saturn won’t be this close again
until 2020 when I’ll miss them again. Dad’s part-time job
pays some of the bills and gifts us Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Our home is barely warm enough to insulate bodies from winter,
but I’ve got a hot water bottle and Pooh Bear in bed.

*

Recession [early 80s]

          Birch Run, Michigan

Childhood
was good.

I didn’t know my parent’s poverty. Didn’t know
we rationed food because

I was out buzzing with bees—
white bursts of pollen floating

and the farmhouse
a yellow brushstroke against the corn-pierced sky.

Mother put the baby on the floor
before the car careened and spun. Summer

swooped like a starling around heads
protecting, the grasses bowing to breeze

like old Moses in Genesis leaning against his cane,
surrendering causes to a new generation.

I remember wild eyes and lore,
before seatbelts were lawful,

mother panting with miracle after arriving home safe,
no car or human damage, the baby

quieted and falling asleep.
She pointed to heaven, to Jesus,

when a rash of needle pricks covered my back—allergies
demanding so much medication. Cattails

grew thick and tall in the ditches, their inches
of stalk below the plateau

assuring I was just the same height. These days,
one must like apples

or applesauce,
or mustard shag carpet—something yellow

such as forsook corn hardened for crows,
or Queen Bee bushy all over pollinating red clover,

hovering the spiney pink globes,
deciding, asserting you, you, you,

you must like applesauce,
eat every last bite, to not taste the bitter white sprinkles

un-capsuled and tossed
into the sweetest luxury food stamps allowed.

I wished it could have been ice cream. It wasn’t.
Yellow ball of daytime sun gone down

as I ate the coveted portion, with spoon,
that no one else got, bees

all tired and sleeping, the baby
bundled for night.

*

After My Father Losses His Job, My Medicine Runs Out

And we lose our healthcare
          like most unemployed families do,
so my mother lifts the empty bottle
          of allergy medication
that keeps me breathing during the greener seasons
          toward heaven (toward
our farmhouse kitchen ceiling) one late
          Wednesday evening after mid-week church
and after the last pill is broke open
          into my applesauce where I, a four-year-old child,
am willing to consume it. She has
          no other option and a little girl
who loves to go outside: it’s Jesus
          or nothing. Oh Lord, she intones, be good to me
throwing the bottle away. She will still
          give me applesauce each evening without
the white medicinal sprinkles, still
          pray nervously, still wake each morning
to feed me breakfast and watch me rush
          out our front door
like an anxious little bee difficult
          to contain. Some kids, I have learned,
grow out of seasonal allergies. Who knows?
          Maybe that was me. Oh Lord
be good my mother prayed
          as I rolled in the summer grass like a skinny cat
fighting off its fleas. As I marched
          into the woodland’s verdant trees.
As I ate my applesauce; in return, offering my mother
          sticks, pretty stones, dead leaves.

*

Locusts

          1981

We searched for wild honey and found it late March
          oozing from maple trees, declaring our woodlands
miraculous. Miracles! Miracles! we hollered,
          demanding the wind turn north or south
at our command. My little brother lifts a stick and strikes a rock.
          Water! he proclaims, hitting the rock
harder, promising a gusher and sputtering noises to mimic
          its fake flow. We drank
from that rock and the wind and the trees. We imagined
          meaty bugs and ate them, pretending their winged bodies
wriggled in our teeth. We listened for the forest,
          pausing along a well-worn path to stand very still
and discern its murmur. Follow, follow, it said.
          So we followed the inspirited tickle of leaves
in gentle breeze above us, limbs swaying and guiding west
          then east. We were such good pantheists
wandering a wilderness like John the Baptist on transcendental
          mission, stalking our Bible’s feral God.

*

Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a neurodivergent writer and the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells. She is the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press 2025) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications 2021, finalist for the American Best Book Awards. A professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University, she lives with her husband in Maine.