~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Andrew Weatherly

Discomfort Food

Chemical Valley, West Virginia

Charleston, St. Albans, Institute, Nitro

fourteen chemical plants grandfathers worked

the Kanawha River you didn’t swim in nor touch

watching the coal barges washing the water

the valley’s inversions

glazing that stew across your lungs

like fish sticks: as good as fish gets

balanced starch and powdered milk

and mac and cheese as

yellow # 5 and # 6—petroleum products—like the valley

comfort found in playing in mud puddles

nostalgia filming over tear ducts

like the prismatic dying of gas on water

and the single father

working all day to serve you Kraft

produces provokes evokes discomfort of what’s missing

Witnessing those rectangular boxes in the grocery

lined up like soldiers not speaking about their mamas

and the only emotion allowed to escape

that internal discipline

regimented across years

is discomfort

because there was not comfort in childhood

nor in the weather eaten shack with asphalt siding

but security in ignorance

and looking forward to that rich golden macaroni and cheese

Andrew Weatherly lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where he hears inspiration from dying trees, Hawaiian shirts, fires, and other poets. He is blessed to teach kids to think for themselves, dance in the streets, and slip off to pilgrimages to sacred mountains. He’s been published in Belle Reve, Axe Factory, Former People, Danse Macabre, Cordite, BlazeVox, The Literary Nest, Commonline Journal, Hot News, and Crack the Spine.