Appian Way
The jest was elusive (we were wolf pups in a basket)
when you tattooed my eight-year-old shoulders
with the heel from one of my patent leather shoes
leaving me with pretty little crescent moons
to mark the moment you’d spun out.
And when I slid expertly under the kitchen table
while contesting your hegemony. Unlike the time
you marched me upstairs, winking, and showed me
how to snap your belt and cry out in phony pain.
And the time I came home late from the movies
to meet your raging fear—Slap her to the East!
Slap her to the West! Show the brat that you know best!—
and pressed the damage into my cheekbones
until they glowed yellow and shone blue:
Rah! Rah! Look! See! What my father did to me!
And when I finally said no. And no more. And no again
to the doctors who beat you with science after you died.
And jolted you back when you died again.
And dredged you in science when you died again.
And when I stayed their hands. Took yours.
Placed in the nothing more between us
the confederation we’d always craved.
We (never even knew we) were having fun.
……
This poem is from the chapbook Diaspora by Sheri Reda (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/diaspora-by-sheri-reda/
Sheri Reda lives in Chicago, where she works as a celebrant, public speaker, and youth librarian. Her poems have appeared in Examined Life Journaland Eocene Journal of Environmental Humanities, and have been anthologized in The Healer’s Burden, The Nature of Our Times and the award-winning Dear Human at the Edge of Time. Her Memoir, Life is Like That (La Vita É Cosi) was longlisted for the 2026 International Creative Voices Award. Sheri is the author of Stubborn (Locofo Chaps/Moria Press). #sheri.a.reda
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