Two Poems

Story Pole

My dad cracks 
an egg 

on my head.
—or maybe 

it’s my grandpa
this time—

it could be 
              varnish / 
              menthol / 
              gasoline;

it could be 
              sawdust /
              Fast Orange / 
              airplane glue, 


palms wool-dry 
and the egg
                            is not an egg.

it’s two fistfuls 
of warm air 

and me playing 
at ignorance,

aping cross-
legged naïveté 

at the foot
of the chair.

Recess

Why should a child know the grit
of brick wall on bare skin? 

Mortar like a shed scab. A game 
and no winner: you show me yours. 

A favorite shirt, shoulders freckling
in the feral almost-summer heat.

A child—this one, brown-
eyed and guileless—

should be skinning their knees
on the sun-baked playground,

should be learning fractions
in the shade, learning

that two tender halves still knit
into a single clumsy whole.

Alicia Wright is a writer from Appalachia whose work appears or is forthcoming in Antiphony Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Does It Have Pockets, New Feathers Anthology, and elsewhere. Her first poetry collection will be published by Pulley Press in 2026. She holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and currently resides in West Virginia.