Poetry by Christopher Adkins

Christopher David Adkins, Ph.D. holds an AS from Virginia Western Community College, a BA with honors from Eckerd College in American Studies, a Master’s in American Studies from the University of South Florida. He also holds a Doctorate in History from the University of South Florida, where he teaches. He is a published historian and folklorist studying Alaska and Southern Appalachia.

Little Pitchers Have Big Ears

He went to her, and he said:

"I will be your wool blanket, this
will be your campfire—
I promise."

And she believed him.

That's how I knew—
someone was betrayed,
someone else was
out with the cold.

My years get dark, in
the evenings, when I draw the blinds—
it's easy enough, coffee after coffee,
Septembers like this,
not to recognize your own skin.

Still—
I can picture them together,
those two, that night—
promises of a place to come to,
the sad nod in affirmation—

My mother told me to look away,
but my blue eyes stayed in one direction,
where this supposedly happened,
standing now in bright new paint,
washing over
the raw flesh of a memory.

Aunts and Uncles

The story, I heard many times,
was how one car hit another, and
getting out to survey the damage, they
saw each other.

He, widower—
she, at first sight, lover.

The union had to be blessed,
the spectacles
of loneliness and loss
ripped away.

So somewhere, though I
never saw it,
there was a grateful head-nod
and an overwhelmed smile.

Too often people say they will
remain close, keep in touch, and
it is only worth mentioning, here, because
he did, and was loved for it.

But some cold day when I was grown, not
the pup everyone remembered me as—
he died.

And then somewhere else, though I
never saw it either,
I knew there were people viewing his body, thinking
to themselves, how
in Heaven, he'd be forced to choose
between the two women who loved him.