Jessica Barksdale
Grim Honey
by Jessica Barksdale
Winner of the 2020 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Manuscript Contest
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Jessica Barksdale’s sixteenth novel What the Moon Did and short story collection Trick of the Porch Light were published in 2023. She’s published three poetry collections: When We Almost Drowned (2019), Grim Honey (2021), and Let’s End This Now (2024). Her work has appeared in The Sun, North American Review, Arts & Letters, and december. She taught at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California and continues to teach for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in Vancouver, Washington.
Unlocked
I miss the keys I’ve had, the locks they fit into,
the doors they opened, homes I wanted to enter, people
sitting and waiting, specifically for me. Keys bought with hope,
a celebration. Come pick them up! It’s yours. My office
at work, the small square that looked out at liquid amber
trees, one sliding window, sun. I let myself in there for
years and years, mine, not mine. The Corolla, the Dodge,
the Volvo, keys to drives and adventures, various people
in various seats. Now a key, my key, my house, maybe
my final house, this place that welcomes me with quiet,
with the end. Hear the sound, oh listen, metal into metal,
turning, a gyre, a push, finally open, so open still.
Hey Jude
is a song but also what I called out to my son,
his name, my call. Hey, I’d yell out to the afternoon
backyard, he and his brother doing something with
shovels or toy cars, or both up in the tree fort
their grandfather built in the box elder maple.
Hey, Jude, I’d call, across a playground, a parking lot
after a middle school dance. Hey, Jude, I’d call out,
but not enough when he was in high school,
and I decided to change my life and not ask his
permission to move out and leave him for two nights
a week with his grieving father. All that sadness
Jude’s, not mine, me the mother, but not. Later,
I came back to myself, to him, and I hey, Juded
him through college and early career choices,
during the pandemic, supporting when every
economy stilled. He and I walked streets and hills
and cemeteries, drinking coffee while sitting
on rain slick benches. Hey, Jude, I call now as he
moves ahead of me, leaning into his life, changed
due to relationships and time, me the woman he
doesn’t really need anymore but is used to. Hey,
I call to him, the little boy out in the backyard. Hey.
