Joy Priest
Sorting Wheat
This is what I remember:
my skin is summer—red-brown
and singing; pappaw and I
at his kitchen table, antique pennies
stacked in leaning towers of ten;
Dresden Avenue breeze reaching at us
from the propped-open screen door
while we search for the one
worth more than the others,
the exception. He learns me
through magnified glass, offers
what he has of value: how to spot twin
wheatheads sprouting up the curve
of coin. His hands—translucent and veiny,
tobacco-stained fingernails—sort
through the pile of pennies
along with mine. Sporadic scratch
of worthless currency across cherry oak
makes rhythm with our impatient lungs,
and I am still small enough to tuck
myself into his lap, when I land a finger
on my first red cent, no Lincoln Memorial
on its tail, only Depression-era stalks
of unassuming wheat that hold the power
to bring this good ole boy
and his high yellow secret
together. When we find ten we stack,
slide a row down the paper wrapper.
Copper cascades into dark, surely
like salt water down the bone of his nose
before he could have known I would be
his exception.
~ Joy Priest was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. She holds a print journalism degree from the University of Kentucky with a concentration in Creative Writing. At 24, she is one of the newest and youngest members of the Affrilachian Poets, and has been published in pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. She was awarded a fellowship to Callaloo Journal's 2013 Summer Creative Writing Workshop at Brown University.