The copperheads littered the hillside
with their corpses, beheaded and silent,
much the same as my grandparents in their graves.
They couldn’t see anymore, if they had ever seen,
and I began to realize, just how life would go.
In the shadow of the mountain, I knew my mind
and I tasted my first blood. I tried to draw
the poison out, even if I didn’t recognize
the snake by its face or by its name.
I looked in the mirror and the face was my own,
the fangs dripping with venom I borrowed from my father.
I left a body there with the others, the girl I had been,
the girl I couldn’t be anymore, because I didn’t
know how to do anything else but bleed.

11/02/2011

Author's Note: So, I was inspired by a friend of mine, who's been posting these poems lately with state abbreviations as the titles, and I thought, I could write poems about the different places where I've lived. The thing is, of course, that if you follow my poetry, or you know me, some of this stuff is going to be familiar to you, and I'm not trying to repeat myself, just trying to get a solid picture of what each place means to me in my mind. Partridge, KY is an almost nonexistent town about five miles away from the Harlan County line. It's where my parents are from, where my grandparents are buried. After I graduated from high school, I lived there for a year and a half. It was where I crash-landed after I decided not to go to college even though I had a scholarship. It was where I started cutting myself. In the house on the side of a mountain, with my grandparents buried in the back yard.

Posted on 11/02/2011
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