Fried Chicken and Coffee

Her youngest crawls through the dog's dish,

then back again to retrieve a red Fruit-Loop

float­ing in water.

She sits under­neath her crackle of blonde hair –

three shades of peroxide

streaked like chicken trails through straw,

while the TV screen flashes her time

like rid­ing out the week­end on the fumes of her clunker

through town, mark­ing moments in backseats

bribed with beer – hers, theirs, doesn't matter,

but leave her a tall-boy for the road

why don't you.

She thinks of that Mor­ris boy, slink­ing through Sat­ur­day night

like a shot of Mescal, the burn released in his hips,

flashed for the cherry-picked few under neon.

Wouldn't she show him

if she could get a hold of his Good Time Charlie,

show him that pretty doesn't count in the dark,

isn't wor­ried over phone num­bers left uncalled,

that a good Bap­tist upbringing

can be tossed away like an empty can of beer.

Sheri L. Wright is the author of five books of poetry, includ­ing the most recent, The Slow Talk Of Stones. Her works of poetry appear in numer­ous jour­nals includ­ing New South­erner, Out of Line, Chi­ron Review, Clark Street Review, Dark­ling and Earth's Daugh­ters, Cru­cible and Ken­tucky Monthly Mag­a­zine. Ms. Wright was nom­i­nated for a Push­cart Prize for her piece, The Ten­ants Of Cen­tral Park , in 2011. She also works as a free-lance edi­tor and as a ghost­writer for web­sites such as Proud Sin­gle Moms and Death​care​.com. She has been a guest poet on Accents, at 88.1 on WRFL out of Lex­ing­ton, Ky. and on Jan­ice Lee “Fea­tur­ing The Arts” on WSKV in Stan­ton, Ky. She has won awards with Jesse Poets, Green River Writ­ers and the Ken­tucky State Poetry Soci­ety, has read exten­sively through­out the Kentucky/Indiana area and has also appeared at New York city’s Cor­nelia Street Café. She has been a vol­un­teer edi­tor for This I Believe. Ms. Wright has taught poetry work­shops for Women in Tran­si­tion, the Ken­tucky Young Writer’s Con­nec­tion and The Ken­tucky State Poetry Soci­ety, judged the poetry divi­sion in The Golden Nibs for the Vir­ginia Writ­ers Club, for Women Who Write and for Green River Writ­ers writ­ing con­test. She is a regional chair for the Ken­tucky State Poetry soci­ety and is co-chair for their adult poetry con­test for 2011. Ms. Wright cur­rently is the host of From The Inkwell, a one hour radio show ded­i­cated to all things lit­er­ary on CHRa­dio 1650am, live-streaming at www​.Cres​centHill​Ra​dio​.com. Please visit her web­site at www​.scrib​blingsand​such​.com.