Aaron McGuffin

Pinch

 

You never really left the kitchen.

 

Your biography?

Thanksgivings,

written in schoolhouse cursive

on thumb shuffles

of yellowed index cards:

 

Candied Sweet Potato Casserole

Giblet Gravy

Castiron Cornbread

Cranberry Dressing

Bread Pudding

 

scrawled within crinkle-worn edges

foxing fingerprints

of leftover grease.

 

Your laugh of measurements

for rosemary, sage, and thyme

unpredictable.

 

Your flour-crooked fingertips

squeezing the dinner rolls

of my cheeks.

 

At this drop-leaf table

I was sure

you were the centerpiece,

funny old bird,

saved in the Sunday creeklight

of this backcountry.

 

Reborn for days like this.

 

On this first year since,

I must be dreaming…

a headstone of tradition

weathered just beyond the

window of these

dishes. 

Aaron McGuffin is a poet and physician who lives and writes in the mountains of Appalachia. He is currently completing an MFA in poetry at West Virginia Wesleyan University. His work explores the liminal space of whimsy and gravity in family, memory, and medicine. His poems have appeared in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Intima, Pharos, Literary Hatchet, As the Crow Flies, and ContiguousLyt, with work forthcoming in Appalachian Journal and Red Ogre Journal.