Poetry By Jessie Wingate

Andrey Shalaev CC




Mountain Spirits

i saw a bumper sticker that read: 

your pawpaw didn’t run shine through 
these hollows for you to be a bootlicker

and it brought to mind men
polished bright as loafers,
their brazen spirits blazing out from behind

as they ran shining by. but then i realized 
they were talking men
covered in coal dust
day in and out

at night with a violent liquid moon 
strong in their eyes and smeared on their lips.
highly flammable humans lit like rags 
in bottles, ragged for the dab
that’ll do them in 

to their beds before the sneak of a blue dawn. 
the morning dew could bring bacon 
for the babes – just a little somethin’ extra –
even though extra on top of not enough  
is just ends meeting
their makers like gods of the woods.

‘cause lord knows what’s in the mine
isn’t yours in the deep hole
of mountain misery.
they may have been bootleggin’ 
but not lickin’ nothin’ ‘cept the snake eyes
of the law, lappin’ them shut, or lookin’
the other way. they covered

themselves in the thick 
dark of molasses hours and the still
frame of hidden seekers 
not wantin’ for trouble, just holdin’
on for the days when the dreams of old 
mother jones’d come to fruition.
she’ll be comin’ round the mountain, 
they all sung, to crook her finger and strike 

them from those pits where the hot fanged 
vipers of despair and defilement threatened 
suffocation. she’d deliver them 
to the vesper mists 
of the shenandoah’s wrists of green
and bless them their daily beers.
and maybe if the labor be softer, so then
be the drink, with time to stop 
and think on the week ends of fishin’

bits for quilts to stuff
in the beddin’ and battin’
one-thousand or at least five-hundred
‘stead of slidin’ into home with the specter
of the forces that be 
kickin’ down your back with the brawn
of their heavy boots. but they did pile 
it on, those paw paw men, like august tramps
juggling the balls of fate while doing simple
maths in their heads.




Jessie is a poet/mother/florist living on unceded Ohlone territory. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MA from San Francisco State (both in Art History). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Southern Humanities Review, F(r)iction, CALYX, Chestnut Review, Mother Mag, California Quarterly, Kestrel, and others. You can read more of her poetry at jessiewingate.com.