Kentucky By Manny Grimaldi

Grateful for time alone

with this paper, with this pen 

I don’t want to leave again. Grateful. That 

horses line the highway, stronger than mules,

and bandanas tell secrets in the cities, I’m grateful 

you kiss my absent tooth, my blooper, my shame— 

and today, I don’t know why you’re aside your horses,

I know you don’t need me to ride them.

Grateful we lean into our breakfast-dinners with 

coffees and a cola, Kentucky—and unfinished day, 

what’s the hurry? The goldenrod grows at my head 

and cardinals peck at my feet—I could die now—!

and I want you to never forget how much it hurt

to get you here, Kentucky, beautiful state of affairs,

beautiful land of human lakes, buenos días.

Give me your deep-fried snickers, your funnel cakes, all your diseases.

I am grateful for this life today. Buongiorno, amore mio—buenos días.

Crows called us emergencies digested and swallowed:

take a woman that led a horse to clamor.

They gnawed well water into such a dull illiteracy 

to babble and deluge every beach and branch, 

county electioneer and school boarder into worship. 

I bit deep into my health to borrow—

it returned replies, I am gone, traveler. 

Kentucky!—in grief to heal I sharpened steel, 

oiled clippers, sheared hair to the skull—

and felt the whirrsome blades in my elbows,

like a lawnmower shakes spectacles on the nose,

and covered my bottomless face in ashes.

Late it was writ I’d draw lottery and loser, defeated and victor.

O, late have I loved you Kentucky, your acorns, pines, and your oaks—

red maples sending sparks to Earth in spiral drawings 

to make “nines” “mine” and encircle air in laurels 

to break free of the world. Grateful to live in trees breathing

in the shape of a key touching mountains, rivers, and cities. 

Tonight, I thank God that I’m dull, flat as a brick,

begging your sharp, incisive wit to grind my verse, 

my unprofitable, toothless strings to sing.

Manny Grimaldi is a Kentucky writer and editor at Yearling, a poetry journal in Lexington. He is author of two poetry collections, Riding Shotgun with the Mothman (about addiction), and Ex Libris Ioannes Cerva (a book of satire). Upcoming a release with Whiskey City about screwing up relationships, and Manny has plans to explore a novella on generational trauma in the style of magical realism, and a collection about heartbreak and release.