Ode to Mama’s Mac and Cheese

A recipe passed down
from her Mama
when she was twenty-four
and hungry.

Some kind of tomatoes,
whatever noodles you can find,
and any cheese you have around.

That mac and cheese
fed us all
when pantry shelves
were bare—
when empty pockets
echoed louder
than the rumbles
in our stomachs.

Prayer
answered—

testament
to mouths
finally fed

History

I.
Stories
tell us we’re invincible;
history
reminds us all we’re not.

II.
My people—
mountain people—
work stories into this clay
and weave our memory
into this
hazy Appalachian horizon.

III.
The onion roots
my granddaddy plants
each and every season;
the muddied boots he’d wear,
day after day working
that field—this is what history
will remember about people like him.

IV.
Remember us all
for the songs we sing—all string,
all spirit; remember us all
for everything we’ve given;
everything we’ve yet to give.

Twenty-Nine, And Still

I.
Twenty-eight years spent living
as ghost-child, turned teen, turning
phantom-limb—longing for alignment, for all
my nerve-endings live-wiring themselves to something
greater than the sum
of all my hollowed parts.

II.
Twenty-nine, and still
haunted—still shrugging off past selves. The old,
scratchy, worn winter coats never fitting
just right, just barely
keeping that frost-bitten bitterness outside
my cold, clumsy reach.

III.
And I’m still waiting, witness to all
versions this serendipitous soul holds
to its horizon. But I am getting tired.

IV.
There’s only so much
hallelujah left
in this softening marrow.

Brittany Morgan is a poet and writer who earned her BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Longwood University in 2020, and her MFA in Creative Writing from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 2023. She is also a poetry editor for Heartwood Literary Magazine and is currently at work on several writing projects.

Featured image “Appalachian mountans” by Masterman242 to be licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.