by Sara Pirkle<\/p>\n
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Sundays while my father slept,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n my mother wrangled us girls\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n into tights and French braids,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n slicked my brother\u2019s cowlick\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n with a wet comb, slid a roast\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n in the oven for after church,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n then ironed my father\u2019s good shirt,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n sprayed Niagara starch on the collar,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n and hung it like a preacher\u2019s robe\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n on the bathroom door. When\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I turned twelve, I took over\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n this chore, and he thanked me\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n each time, thinking I did it for him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I was doing it for my mother.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sara Pirkle is a Southern poet, an identical twin, a breast cancer survivor, and a board game enthusiast. Her first book,\u00a0The Disappearing Act<\/i>\u00a0(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.<\/p>\n
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