Tonight's Poet Corner: Refusing Her Sugar

Refusing Her Sugar
by Belinda Roddie

And there were guns
hanging on her wall, all
stripped down to their basic
metal parts. Skeletons, every
one of them, gleaming gray bone
as they displayed a history
of America that had never exactly
become history at all.

We drank bad sour mash, played
chess on an old board with pieces
missing crowns and snouts
and heads. She undressed me without
touching me, navigated castles into
my corner, and shackled my queen
to one sad, solitary square.

She told me she had wanted to be
the sheriff's deputy, and even when
the job ultimately went to his fat,
aggressive Kentucky son, she wore
the cowboy hat better than anyone
in all of Southern Appalachia. Said
she could shoot a deer between
the eyes every time. It'd never blink.

I guess she thought I was supposed
to be entranced by this. To be
wooed, courted by a rugged lady hailing
from the thigh gap between the Midwest
and the Northeast. I won two out of
five games, but only because I
checkmated her when she was falling

asleep. Snoring like the rumble of
Civil War era rifles. Repeating.
That same, tired story, rattling like
loose tooth ammo, deep into
the Tennessee night.