By Rachel A. Hicks

Featured Image: Untitled by Tanner Pearson

“I don’t want to be cured of beautiful sounds,” insisted Milo.

            —The Phantom Tollbooth

Must I implore you for more of what I want?
A clanging of fine china, symphonies of wet
spoons, clattering of forks falling from the violent
sky, a click-clack-click of yellow teeth
saying not much of worth in the night.

If trash can be treasure then I can be sound.
I can be the scream rising like steam
from the red kettle sitting on your mother’s stove.

I am the thumping & cheering & crying
of every bum, junkie, bride & boy in town.

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Rachel A. Hicks was a teacher and writer from Charleston, West Virginia. She earned her MFA in poetry from West Virginia Wesleyan. Her first collection, Appalachian Ghost Floating Down, Your Hall was published posthumously in June 2021. Her work has been published in Feminine Rising, The Pikeville Review and Still: The Journal.