DISH

Her fluted serving bowl,

the only thing I kept, is green,

emblazoned with a rooster

in the bottom, its comb

three crosshatched teardrops, like

its single teardrop wattle.

Its breast bears arrows, curling

towards its tail. Whenever

she boiled cubed potatoes

buttery and salty, she

would serve them in this dish,

the best of her depression

service. Yellow melted beads

of butter bobbed in boiling

water, coalescing

as the dish cooled and emptied,

leaving the rooster beneath

a shallow, golden lens.

Thomas Alan Holmes, a member of the East Tennessee State University English faculty, lives and writes in Johnson City, Tennessee. Some of his work has appeared in Louisiana Literature, Appalachian Journal, Seminary Ridge Review, Florida Review, Blue Mesa Review, Black Warrior Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia, with work forthcoming in Cape Rock Journal, Stoneboat, Connecticut Review, Emerge, and Noctua Review.