Emilee Kinney

At 2 A.M.

When my grandmother
can’t sleep, she shakes
holy water in each corner
of the field to save crops
from storms, but the sky
has been wrenched open
for days now—a glass eye,
yawning maw dry as soot.
Even the treeline caves
in, falls like lost teeth,
lichen-licked and swallowed
whole by thin-capped lion’s
mane, wide-brimmed wood
ear—she recites each name
like her favorite prayer.
At night, I too shake
in the corners of the field,
but there is nothing holy
about the water in my hands.
Field-dust mocks
my failed ritual, sings
give me your beads, your bones,
your slick, slick tongue—
I learn nothing, when I meet her
in the stale dark. She kisses
the crumbling lupine
I offer. Crowning her
chapped lips, pale petals stick.

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Emilee Kinney hails from the small farm-town of Kenockee, Michigan, near one of the Great Lakes: Lake Huron. She received her MFA in poetry at SIU Carbondale and is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has been published in Passages North, West Trestle Review, Cider Press Review, SWWIM and elsewhere. www.emileekinneypoetry.com.