Cornmeal and cooking grease violently clash-
a one-time ritual now lodged in a failing hippocampal vault
which crackles through a growing divide,
materializing in your frying pan,
at least for today.
The scent rises;
a batter-bathed cyclone of collective unconscious
circulating upward through vents
like generations of mountaineers summoning me.
I attend this hallowed call,
demon stop to your holy ghost tent revival
in the kitchen that is also a living room
You said, “Hush Puppy!”
A thick Appalachian rasp
sending its reverb off the drywall
and through the feather reeds
that only you can see.
Below the native aroma,
I sat pinstriped in the dull light cast through vertical, linoleum blinds;
(You sat in the feather reeds)
and we ate fried dough.
Amanda Harris is writer and faculty member at Seton Hall University and Caldwell University. Raised by an Appalachian single father in a well-to-do Southern Californian beach community, Amanda is interested in capturing the complicated process of negotiating regional identities that are seemingly at odds. She lives outside of New York City with her husband, sons, and shih tzu.