Delicious

by Lexi Pelle

Delicious

The cashier checks to see if any eggs in the carton are cracked
before carefully setting it back on the conveyor belt.

A mother lays the smooth gray stone she pulled
from her daughter’s pocket into the warm basket

beside the washing machine. These delicate displays,
small stays against the schlepp toward death.

I watch the youth pastor drop his pick into the hole
of his guitar—is his love of god the way he holds it

upside down to dislodge it, or the tip tip tip it makes
as it refuses to fall through? My cousin’s kid Nellie

stomps around the bridal shower in her blue dress,
mad she’s been given a red solo cup of soda

instead of a glamorous champagne flute.
When Margo tips her glass into the grass

and hands it to her, she squeals and wraps
her sticky hand around the stem.

She toasts the air, the trees, the backless
dresses of the distracted drinking women.

Tips back her head and drinks the air.

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Poet Lexi Pelle was the winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book prize. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Ninth Letter, Plume, december, and The Shore. She is the author of the poetry collection, Let Go With The Lights On (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023). Lexipelle.org

Artist Kale Hensley is a West Virginian by birth and a poet by faith. They live in Texas with their wife, best friend, and a menagerie of clingy pets. Find more of their poetry, nonfiction, and visual art at kalehens.com.