The Ire Barn

                  Tracy Mishkin

 

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I don’t want to go inside. It smells of dark

and heat and rotting grass. Here a man can

smash the gas pedal and kill. Hold the trigger

and spill. All this red, like a vine tightening

on my neck. Kids strapped in car seats feel

the water already at their knees. Someone

is trying to pray, but the words leak out

like bright arterial blood. A snarling dog bites

the air with the flat crack of breaking glass.

The token embrace that doesn’t stop the hate.

I think this place goes on forever. I don’t want

to go inside, but I’m already here.

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the way the salt falls from her hands

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she hard-bargains with farmers

picks through produce

her van holds many bushels

 

in the heat of August

she is steady as spring

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she dumps ice in the sink

her pot can fit a dozen jars

she’s ready before I arrive

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we slip tomatoes into boiling water

slide off the skins

 

she wears my college sweatshirt

under her apron

 

I love the way she quarters roundness in her palm

the chunks drop into the jar

the salt falls from her hands

 

we cradle jars with tongs

lower glass into the rack

the water boils under her gaze

 

her steel necklace

matches her eyes

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Tracy Mishkin is a call center veteran with a PhD and an MFA student in Creative Writing at Butler University. Her chapbook, I Almost Didn't Make It to McDonald's, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2014. Her second chapbook, The Night I Quit Flossing, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press in December 2016.