that boy
that boy come swarping along
like he’s somebody’s birthday prize
yellow headed and peach fuzzed
still pink around the gills
my eyes ache from the dazzle
while his eyes glue to Delvina
ringing and twisting by but she
don’t pay him no mind
it’s me and him at Snider’s barn
an owl stirring
something whirred
lace spiderwebs trail off my
head like a wedding veil as
we laid down on moldy hay oh
lord love a sinner i’m going to hell
i do not care i do not i
gulp his smell into my lungs
hold it in like weed and get high
as a kite on that boy who’s
wishing i was Delvina
.
Drema Hall Berkheimer is published in Flashquake, Brevity, Persimmon Tree, Babel Fruit, Southern Women’s Review, Muscadine Lines, Senior Times, and The Register-Herald Divine Magazine, and is forthcoming in Plain Spoke, Dead Mule, Long Story Short, Divine, and West Virginia South. She won First Place Nonfiction and First Honorable Mention Nonfiction in the 2010 WV Writers Competition, and two awards in the 2010 C. C. Young arts competition. She is writing a memoir, Running On a Red Dog Road, about growing up in post-Depression West Virginia, the child of a father who was killed in the coal mines, a Rosie the Riveter mother, and devout Pentecostal grandparents. Affiliations include WV Writers, Salon Quatre, and The Writer’s Garret in Dallas.
