Parton Me

Picking at purple butterfly pea flowers

As they dance just beneath the boiling point,

Organic and ostentatious all at once.

She melts in that two-legged, straight-back chair

Like a post-partum popsicle,

Seeping between the spaces of the wooden porch planks.

A Tennessee home with no chirping crickets,

A mountain-side of stolen honeysuckle sweetness.

She sings for the june bugs and the fireflies,

She sings for the songbird and the baby’s sighs,

Just as magnificent as her muffled Monday cries,

She sings for a life built on luscious lavender lies.

Kyle Rea is a queer writer from Ohio. They currently live in New York City, where they’re pursuing a creative writing MFA at The New School. Their poetry and fiction can be found in Subnivean, Dirty Girls Magazine, Jenny Magazine, and more.