David Eileen Winn

Great Grandma Peers into My Panic Attack from Heaven

I’m praying a thousand miles an hour. I am softening butter she could
have churned with the same dumb pride. She cooked food over wood
fires, scooped lard into cast iron with two crooked fingers. She knew
a knuckle rap from a nun’s ruler when she had it coming. All those
prayer cards she tucked between armchair cushions could have
told you that. My prayers buzz around the sizzling food
I’m soothing like horseflies she caught 

                                                       & threw against the barn door to stun them before
                                                       she tied a string behind their wings,
                                                       kept them for pets.

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David Eileen Winn is a non-binary poet and Ohio native who earned his MFA from Florida Atlantic University while Editor-in-Chief of the school’s literary magazine, Swamp Ape Review. They are currently on the editorial board for Alien Magazine, and their work has appeared in Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net Anthology, Permafrost, Cherry Tree Review and Small Orange, among others. On Instagram, they go by @thevibeguardian. Without purple pens, much of his work would not exist.