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repast

Molly Williams

A poem by Molly Williams, repast. The poem reads: comfort food: nursing a chicken leg, reveling in the peel and sink. something to hold clean, to wholly know. the weekend of my grandmother’s funeral, we eat two full chicken dinners over two endless days. welcome to georgia, or grief: an endless peach state. the second night we are mute, order in, tune out red blisters of news on the hotel tv, marvel again at the release—the cupped dove eyed me, knowing, unafraid—and the miracle of what happened after: steady arc, sudden sky, splitting january sun. the cardboard is empty save the cooling-butter smell of my father’s youth. he digests; his eyes pool on his cheekbones. every mourner, examining her young eyes on their programs, told me i was her spitting image. i showed my teeth, wondered whether being known could strip me bare. in their wire cage, the tagged pigeons mumbled, readying themselves for release and return.

art by cy @cyberwitch666
 

Molly Williams (Twitter: @mollyvwilliams, Instagram: @mollyvwill) is a Black/mixed-race & queer student of fiction & poetry at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. They previously lived in Brooklyn, NY, & and have poems published in No Contact and forthcoming in Typehouse.

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