My Hicks

Hadley Volner

after Terrance Hayes

I will stay with the hicks at home, and I 
will cough a lung in Uncle’s garage. Lock 
me in wood-paneled forests, and you
will leave Pandora’s box of Marlboro Reds in
my lap, walls tinged yellow as your spineless stomach. An 
American gun trumps your Purple Heart prayers for American
times and American folks, a sick, slow sonnet
for the bowed heads tipped to your muzzle. For that,
a liver-spotted slap dripping against my hick cheek is
enough to root me to your town, and I will part 
ways with a strange city, in your American prison.

Hadley Volner is a junior at The Willow School in New Orleans, LA, and is enrolled in the four-year Certificate of Artistry program for creative writing. She has been published in her school's literature and visual art magazine street, and her poem "At the Foot of My Grandmother's Bed" was published in the Fall/Winter 2023 edition of Élan. She currently plays soccer for her school and for the Louisiana Fire Soccer Club, and runs track as well as cross country.