​Somewhere in Missouri - Maya Dally

right now there is a woman
wandering the intensity
of blue morning, scouting
for fat morels and ginseng
like private glories gone by.
It could be that she’s thinking
of her chunky baby girl
in an Old Navy fourth of July
top, pressing for pigtails.
 
Her gap teeth and dirty feet.
 
It may be that the woman digs
polished fingers into humus
begging for her bones, imagines
scatterings of baby girl’s curly hair
through panic in the dirt as she splits
clods in half and wonders why
she keeps bringing children
to filth. Damn the fruitlessness
of mushroom hunt, damn the dirt
under her nails. When she pulls
herself from soil in a gasp,
though her hands are bloody
and show dead signs of jackpot
they are once again empty
like her birth and whatever
else came after that. 


Maya Dally is an early career writer and graduate student who is pursuing an M.A. in Writing while teaching first-year composition. She grew up all around the Midwest and the South, and has been writing poetry since she was a child. Her work has been featured in Cathexis Northwest Press.