Addison Hoggard

Country Table

country table is my grandfather country who,
his piety personified and sat next to me at dinner,
kissed prayers into the air that I’d recite from dust—

country table is my grandmother country’s surplussed
mashed potatoes and peas, country wrapped up in her
like cotton candy caught in chicken wire—

country table is my mother country who doesn’t use plates,
only ash trays, and beer can’s sweat country draws fate
in rings upon the surface, fallen cherry’s fire lights her own pyre—

country table is my father country and hunting hogs
in bright country bogs, tabling that country game and reduced
to the basest self, best self when the whiskey is loosed—

forget God’s country no country only my country augers
holes in my country skull, ribs; my country goddess raises
from cattails and whistles hymns through the pines

of fragile country, country table swells under my lifeline
and when I press down it splinters, soggy country debases,
false country, wrong country, I sit in rotten country chair

and it collapses, warped country, not my country, I long
to smell country table before the termites, mossy spawn,
forest fauna country, bury me country, I country, you country.

Addison Hoggard (he/him) is a writer and language teacher hailing from the rural inner-banks of North Carolina. He is currently based in the Aizu region of Japan. His writing has appeared in Wild Roof Journal, Cathexis Northwest, Miracle Monocle’s micro-anthology Queer, Rural, American, and elsewhere.