Alicia Wright

The Sugar Tree

A postage stamp house in the shade
of a rangy pin oak squats patient
and every morning I am still there,
still tying my shoes in the sharp-
angled attic, backpack an anchor
at my feet. From the window
I watch the pond gnaw its banks,
watch it eat at the sugar tree’s roots.
In autumn’s thick gloaming my father
will arrive with an ax, the water gone
now brackish and still. In the attic
the felling will echo, will ring
like a bell in the eaves.

Alicia Wright is a queer writer from Appalachia. She holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in River and South Review, Eunoia Review, The Crawfish, Thimble, Kestrel, and elsewhere.