by Sara Pirkle
Sundays while my father slept,
my mother wrangled us girls
into tights and French braids,
slicked my brother’s cowlick
with a wet comb, slid a roast
in the oven for after church,
then ironed my father’s good shirt,
sprayed Niagara starch on the collar,
and hung it like a preacher’s robe
on the bathroom door. When
I turned twelve, I took over
this chore, and he thanked me
each time, thinking I did it for him.
I was doing it for my mother.
Sara Pirkle is a Southern poet, an identical twin, a breast cancer survivor, and a board game enthusiast. Her first book, The Disappearing Act (Mercer University Press, 2018), won the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. In 2019, she was nominated for Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry, and in 2022 she was shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry Prize. She is the Assistant Director of Creative Writing at The University of Alabama.