She was born round and red
and naked as an apple
with little mole-nose hands,
those tiny questing fingers,
trying to find the way back home.
Back under the garden of her mother
where light was pink,
and sounds were muffled
by flesh and fluid.

You looked at her that Sunday
like she was a serpent’s gift.
You stood stripped bare by hatred.
Your mouth loosened like bowels,
and the stench of old white words
filled the dining room.

Eyes fell to re-see

Ham
with heat-cracked skin,
its slices hung open
like full-lipped mouths.

Place settings
wrapped in pure white.
Each crowned
with a single starched point.

I was too young.
My mind chose flight over fight
and raced away
down the snaking sugar sand dirt road
with its rusted barbed wire scaled sides
at a speed that turns the fence posts
into ribs. I was in its ophidian belly
as it slithered past every home
for miles.

Matt Bearden has always been fascinated by poetry’s almost alchemical ability to transmute sympathy into empathy. There is something wonderful about the emotional connections that form between the voice of the narrator and the reader, and he always tries to foster those connections in his writing. You can find his work in Oxford Magazine and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.