It Only Takes Ten Fingers To Hold the Sky
From gasoline-scented memories to the purple of maternal exhaustion, these poems capture the raw essence of Appalachian childhood and the profound wisdom of letting go.
I Try to Name Every Color in West Virginia but I Run Out of Breath
Play soft now. My pastels
are dunders of colors,
lazy cockwhores of explore,
birthing worlds for lice
and the other despised, roaches
of raunch, cousins’ creation
determined best forgotten. If this
be the first day, let there be
a dandelion pink adorning the tit
of a boar, and let there live
the rotten red of a warsh rag chewed
by a child cutting teeth. God, step aside
one more minute, while I unearth
the purple of do-less, the bruise mothers
brew when there’s too much to do.
Evening shall bend to the silk of coleslaw,
the shade shared by a frog’s under-
belly and the grass on the hillside, when
a girl has lain there far, far too long.
The Origins of Surrender Lie in the Cartwheel
There is a spell on me. Whenever I smell gasoline, I am called
There isback to high grasses spared from the lawnmower, tank filled but
left to idle. I had tried many-a-time that June afternoon, but I
There iscould not get the footwork just right. My dad, always sleeveless,
laughed at me, his dittying child who could not go in circles,
There iswho believed too much in straights and narrows. I blamed all
but myself—our yard too hilly, the lilac bush an unflowering
There isobstacle, my parents whose blood bred in me not rhythm nor
balance. But my dad was a better, eager and temperamental as
There isweather. He believed in his children more than he did God.
Forget your faith and watch—it only takes ten fingers to hold
There isthe sky, only two arms to collide with the grass, only two legs
to return you back to home. It was not laughter that grew out
There isof me but thunder, seeing that plumb fool forsake the workday
to dig his feet into the clouds. It is only now, pumping gas, I
There isrealize my problem—I did not know how to put my feet down,
to follow the motion, to swallow abandon. No, it was not my
There islack of rhythm but submission to it—it was my assumption that
I must hold so much weight with only two hands. I miss you
There isDad, and I will try not to worry. Fine, for once, I will be carried.
About the author
Kale Hensley is a West Virginian by birth and a poet by faith.