Brittany Frasure
A Southern Mourning

When Pap died,
we ate fried chicken after the funeral.
I sat and had a biscuit,
wanting silence
      and a shower
to wash away the germs
death had brought,
cemetery dirt caked thick
on the bottoms of my black-heeled shoes.
It was January cold,
and all I could do
was freeze.

Brittany Frasure, of Paintsville, a BSCTC alumnus, is now a student at Pikeville College.