~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of December 2025 ~
Tag: Sarah Mackey Kirby
The Thousands of Us Who Clean Shit Off the Floor by Sarah Mackey Kirby
The Thousands of Us Who Clean Shit Off the Floor
I don’t drink into the night
like Bukowski, etching “Bluebird”
into the literary canon as
a breathtaking fuck you to
the elbow patch cocktail parties
and academic writing conventions.
I’ve never lived dangerously
or marched to the drum
of a drummer in some
indie band lighting
cigarettes by the dozens.
I am one of thousands
tucked behind an old porch,
behind brick,
on a street lined with
joggers, barking dogs,
and magnolia blossoms
drooping into fall.
I clean shit off the floor
when my momma can’t
get to the bathroom in time
and her Depends aren’t enough.
I write only before the morning light
and stop to pour divided medicines
into a cup, get her coffee,
make her yogurt, stir powdered fiber
into ice-cold ginger ale,
help her onto a shower chair,
wash her feet.
Writing, itself, is rebellion.
Against the monotony,
the daily navigation
of another’s confusion
and memory jumbles.
Driving her to doctors.
Waiting during tests and surgeries.
Making sure her dinner
is hot, but not too hot.
I am no saint. No one to
feel sorry for. And
I am no outsider. It’s
been years since I’ve
worn black knee-high boots
with a leather skirt
and gone out dancing.
I am one of thousands
lost inside this love.
We live in the crevices,
folding laundry once
stained with tomato soup.
We hug as tightly as we can.
Because the only thing more
heartbreaking than this hell
will be the day hell ends.
*
Sarah Mackey Kirby was born and raised among fat bumble bees and redbud trees in Louisville, Kentucky. She taught middle and high school social studies, which brought her incredible joy and hilarious moments. Her poems appear in Chiron Review, ONE ART, Ploughshares, Third Wednesday Magazine, and elsewhere. She’s the author of the poetry collection, The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021) She loves to cook, dig in garden dirt, and root for University of Louisville basketball. Find Sarah’s work at https://smkirby.com/
Rattlesnakes by Sarah Mackey Kirby
Rattlesnakes
The young folk came from Nashville,
from the Bronx, and Carolinas.
To the land of rattlesnakes,
of cotton,
of wildflowers,
and tomato sandwich picnics.
To the land of burning crosses. Lynchings.
Crickets playing Mississippi blues.
The 1960s Delta. And my dad,
raised in a Brooklyn housing project,
nervous, poor, but proud,
felt a calling to Atlanta.
Then to Freedom Summer’s promise.
Hattiesburg, where mosquitos
were never short on blood.
They were young women. Young men.
Black and white together,
filled with fear and courage.
In cars. On buses. Walking miles
to sign folk up to vote.
My dad was beaten in his back
with a police baton in Jackson.
Many times arrested.
Chased by the Klan
one magnolia afternoon.
They were workers.
They were students.
Singing songs
of freedom,
praying grace
would rise up
from the clay.
He’s dead now.
Like so many of the rest.
I think about him as a boy,
listening. Ear to his transistor.
Rooting on Pee Wee Reese
and Jackie Robinson.
Hopeful the Dodgers would
take the Series in ’55.
I think about the hissing
nine years later.
Rattlesnakes warning danger
if he stepped foot
where he didn’t belong.
The cypress and pecan trees.
The grasses and the stars.
History’s grit turned into songs
that if not sung and sung,
will lay untold and dormant.
Stuck like old truck tires
in the Mississippi mud.
*
Sarah Mackey Kirby is the daughter of Ira Grupper. Her father was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and lifelong civil rights, disability rights, and labor rights activist who passed away July 23, 2024. Like her dad, she loves to write. She hopes this poem honors him. And all the people who walked through this hell to effect change.
Potato Peeling by Sarah Mackey Kirby
Potato Peeling
Let it be known for historical accuracy
but you can never tell my husband,
that when I’m hand-slimed
from potato peeling
on a Wednesday evening,
water boiling on the stove
and he sneaks up behind me,
grabs my waist,
and twirls me in my dog socks,
and I act annoyed because
I’m trying to time things perfectly,
that I am, in fact, not annoyed.
And when he thinks I don’t hear him
creeping toward me because I have
headphones on, I do hear him.
I pretend I don’t. Because the
drives-me-nuts shock
as he snatches me up and laughs
is his favorite part of it.
So if he knew I know
when he is about to do that,
and since my pretending I don’t
is one thing I love most,
then his knowing I know
would ruin those moments
for both of us.
*
Sarah Mackey Kirby grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021). Her poems appear in Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY, The New Verse News, ONE ART, Ploughshares, Third Wednesday Magazine, and elsewhere. She taught high school and middle school social studies until a few health surprises changed her path. Sarah is an always-teacher-at-heart and a forever second momma to hundreds of students. She and her husband divide their time between Kentucky and Ohio. https://smkirby.com/
Death of a Child Who Never Was by Sarah Mackey Kirby
Death of a Child Who Never Was
I need to bury you, this mind-figment
that can never become.
Into a place where you lose meaning.
Some former dream, diminished.
A white dwarf star succumbed to light pressure,
helium-swallowed core, collapsed but somehow
still shining inside my narrative,
each evening’s reemergence unwelcome.
I want you, who never was,
to stay distant and vague.
Unrecognizable, obscure music.
Disconnected as chartreuse, the color and name.
Some untenable heel-dug position
decomposing at last under the weight of proof.
Leave me. Fall cooling into the wilderness,
canopied under treetops. Capitulate to this gravity,
and descend into the thickened woods at dusk,
where I can no longer author your voice.
*
Sarah Mackey Kirby grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021). Her poems appear in Muddy River Poetry Review, The New Verse News, ONE ART, Ploughshares, Third Wednesday Magazine, and elsewhere. She taught high school and middle school social studies until a few health surprises changed her path. Sarah is an always-teacher-at-heart and a forever second momma to hundreds of students. She and her husband split their time between Kentucky and Ohio. https://smkirby.com/
The Truth about Loving Me by Sarah Mackey Kirby
The Truth about Loving Me
I thought I knew, but I didn’t,
not until the vomit came.
Whether he had what it took
to love me. To really love me.
If he could stomach a skull dressed with
staples, railroad-tracked from lobe to lobe,
dark curls gross from lack of shampoo.
While I searched for some indication
I was still here. Still human.
Whether he’d sit with me for a month,
as a tongue once used for kissing him
felt so heavy my speech dribbled thick
incomprehensible molasses. And legs
once used to dance ballet and hip-hop
turned to noodles on a sparkly mopped floor.
When my fingers couldn’t grip a pen.
When he drove me to Minnesota,
polar vortex snow punching January white,
in time for a Mayo Clinic Monday
that turned into much longer.
Where icicles dangled gorgeousness
by Mississippi River cliffs
like cave-artist-carved stalactites
to make us both forget for
a moment why we were there.
That we were there.
How I found out the truth….
Not with hot sand toes
on palmetto tree vacations.
Or stargazer lily bouquets.
Or laugh-laden birthdays.
Or pictures posing in summer light.
But in a bed that caught my teardrops
with me pissed at the world.
Some nights, even at him.
Blood and brain goo
draining into an oval container
as he covered an exposed
part of my foot with a blanket.
*
Sarah Mackey Kirby is a Kentucky poet and writer. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021). Her poems appear in Ploughshares, Chiron Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Punk Noir, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MA in teaching and a BA in political science from the University of Louisville. She and her husband live in Louisville. https://smkirby.com/