by Rachel Andoga

Praise the chili in its pot, the honest mistake of cayenne for chili powder. Praise the quart of sour cream that failed to cool your mouth. Praise the weekend meal-planning, the Costco trip and long lines, all gone to utter shit. Praise the unbidden tears. Praise the hot skin prickling with what next. Praise this heat like an early thaw: the sudden creek-melt of frost holding fast debris from last winter. Praise the deluge, the tangle of branch and brush rushing downstream. Praise the crash and flood, and the smell, septic and feral. Praise the foxes keeping their distance. Praise the silence of night and the moon, infant-faced and beaming over dark clouds, eager to catch a glance. Praise the dumb lurch of the human heart.

Rachel Andoga is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in journals including Third Coast, Sundog Lit, and Arcadia, which awarded her the Dead Bison Editor’s Prize for Poetry in 2016. She teaches and writes in Frederick, Maryland.