aayoungmy stomach growls
for Kentucky cookin’
church pot lucks of the past
made by old pin curled women
in floral dresses
no longer living
laid out
upon Christian hobbled tables
beneath a giant oak tree
no longer standing
baked beans
macaroni salad
fried chicken
pineapple upside down cake
deviled eggs
damned fine eatin’
and believe you me
no one
can devil an egg
like a Baptist
beside our family church
her corpse lies chained
to the crudest of casons
an eighteen wheeled barge to carry away
any memory of her majesty
centuries of rings compose her fallen trunk
she has been murdered by her own
this primordial beech tree
slaughtered
bleeding out our family history in xylem and phloem
this grandmother who has shaded the weary shoulders
of our toiling ancestors
for two hundred years
who has seen every birth, death, family reunion, and creek bed salvation
whose roots grew beneath the graves before they were filled
she is now as dead as they are
she had become too much to care for the cousins said
with no thought of taking up a collection for her care
or notion to call an arborist
executioners are far cheaper
they have cut down our family tree
turned our homeland into a crime scene
burned our history out of the ground
dishonoring god’s earth
all the while claiming she was rotten
but it was not her who harbored disease
the sickness lies within the hearts
of her ungrateful shade tree children
who massacred her without consideration
as useless as moths at war
no forgiveness given
i curse the henchmen
that they may lose their way to heaven