Lady of the Holler
Cheyenne C. Fletcher
A set of reins hang on an iron spoke. Your inherited horse grazes
the land passed down from your great great grandmother.
Your place in Pine Holler just north of town,
a mile down from Jericho, close to your writing friend,
Ms. Synar's place. You are cinder blocked to the land.
See? In the cemetery, your dead daddy’s name etched in concrete.
Surrounded by prairie. Your late-blooming addiction showing on your left arm. Your seasoned skillet of cast iron. Your grey coming in at the crown.
A middle-life backroad romp soundtrack.
Can’t help but to belt along. These songs of humid love.
It never got better. The last time you were joyous, you were also
drunk. Your head hanging out the passenger window in a 90’s model
chevy shortbed. The scene was all gravel, and prairie, and pink
sunset. Adulthood has been one disorder followed by another. When you’re poor,
everyone dies early. Gunshot wounds, addiction, hanging. Grief
is steadfast, too. The men hold you through each loss, but always
end up as ghosts disappearing into tallgrass. Worse, they stick around
because you, in your sameness, save. Resentment tends
to follow. You never really left that car. You stay longing for release.
The man who also stayed boxes your ear for being still.
The ringing and the prairie sound the same.
AUDIO
Listen to Cheyenne C. Fletcher read “Lady of the Holler.”
About this poem: The beginnings of this poem happened in Gabrielle Bates’ craft course on image, sound, syntax, and the line offered by Hugo House which I attended with support from the organization.
Three poems by Cheyenne C. Fletcher, including “Lady of the Holler,” were selected for the Sita Martin Prize for Shō No. 8. Cheyenne’s poems “Obit #1” and “Obit #2” appear in Shō No 8.
Read about the Sita Martin Prize for emerging poets here, or view past recipients and honorees.
Cheyenne C. Fletcher is a poet, auntie, educator, and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She’s an MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco.
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