Love Across All Our Hands
Eleni Karelis explores the daily miracles of survival in modern Appalachia and finds wonder stitched into the landscape and people of Eastern Kentucky—where every touch, taste, and song records a life lived with fierce tenderness.
Kentucky poetry | Appalachian quilt stories | Eleni Karelis poems
Aunt Peggy
Razor scooters in a cul-de-sac,
cold ham and cheese sandwiches,
wait thirty minutes before gettin’ back in the water,
blue raspberry smiles, and popping sparklers,
how the sunny days remind me of you.
The rain does that to me also,
singing music my grandma wouldn’t like
against the percussion of a Kentucky thunderstorm,
hiding under the stairs during a tornado warning—
(I always knew I was safe with you there).
Most often when I think of you,
I think of a warm voice reminding me,
you don’t want one of these baby,
a Marlboro dangling from a bony finger.
Warnings I wish you’d have listened to yourself.
When people think of the smell of a cigarette,
they smell that death-stricken stench
that sticks to your clothes,
poisons your breath,
but I think of you.
You smelled like Coppertone summers,
Hot-n-Ready pizzas,
ice cold Coca-Cola,
Thanksgiving carrot cakes,
And, yes, even cigarettes.
Those cigarettes that remind me
of a cold and bleached-white hospital,
of being assured of remission
just to find out, months later,
that doctors can’t always work miracles.
And maybe it wasn’t the cigarettes,
maybe a lifetime of waiting tables
in the smoking section, those heavy clouds
finding a home in your lungs, your head
as you just worked to keep a roof over yours.
Or maybe it was the lifetime in a coal town,
industrialization, rich men from cities
hundreds of miles from ours,
polluting our air, taking your lungs.
I’m sure the cigarettes didn’t help, though.
Now “maybes” are pointless,
rattling in my head like dice in our hands
a snow day board game, and we gambled
for your fate. And yet, four years later, I can’t
smell a cigarette without a smile on my face.
Kentucky poetry | Appalachian quilt stories | Eleni Karelis poems
Love the Color of Rust
after “You’re Not Alone” by Our Native Daughters
Small hands press
into my back as my heels
kick up the dirt
to a beat only we can hear
and the rust
from the chains
spreads across my hands
like bows across a string.
The music, the trill
of our youngest cousin
crying, it’s my turn!
the measures
of our solstice day.
Orange handprints
spread across my face,
my sister’s, my cousins too;
they aren’t mad—
they love being young,
being messy, and
before we know it,
It’s my turn!
Playground song plays on
the four of us,
a quartet of girlhood.
Girls with fire engine hands
to match faces turning crimson
in the late evening.
Until we pass that red, loud,
love across all our hands—
aunts, moms, and grandmas—
singing together that silly song
And tonight,
rust colored bath water
will drain in all our tubs.
Kentucky poetry | Appalachian quilt stories | Eleni Karelis poems
Mamaw’s Hands
Her hands work faster than the old Singer gathering dust
in the hallway closet. The machine would do just fine but her hands
were far better at pulling together the memories from her bag of scraps,
weaving tragedies, comedies, stories of love ingrained in the threads.
The fabric from Papaw’s work pants, my uncle’s Carhartt jacket
that finally tore last time we had a big snow,
dresses from babies that turned to shirts in passing seasons, and
a brand new yard of something that she bought
to bring the whole quilt together.
Working with an eighth grade education and rearing six
youngins at the same time, Mamaw would never let you
see how much she didn’t know. She didn’t know much
about calculus but she could do long division to make sure
the contents of the pantry kept everyone fed. Her grammar
wasn’t quite perfect but she taught us all to write in
cursive before we could speak a full sentence. Mamaw wasn’t
a scholar, but she taught us lessons in her kitchen
more valuable than I ever learned in a classroom.
What mamaw did know, she showed with her hands. Hands that
smoothed hair to give forehead kisses, hands rolling fresh
biscuits on a Sunday morning, hands sewing like she was now.
Sewing together fragments on her family tree; weaving
intricate patterns reminding us of our home. And I just lay here
watching the stories come together from underneath the quilting frame;
my tea parties secure beneath her protective hands.
Hailing from the hills of Hazard, Kentucky, Eleni Karelis is a poet and researcher who writes about a modern Appalachia that contradicts stereotypical depictions and reflects both her lived experiences and her research. She holds a master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Westminster in London, England, and a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.
