Darby Holler

Holler like hollow

Hollow like empty

Empty like a geode

Empty like a dialect

that drops consonants

Hillbilly or Redneck

slow talk, puzzling

vowels together

where they shouldn’t be

Grow turns into

growed, as in all growed up

growed up like a weed

I growed up here         on D Road

deep in the holler

learned to drive in a two-door

red truck.         D road

is all bank, 31 degrees

steep like Daytona

like a breath     Sundays

crack open

and show us the family inside

sparkling purple                      I paced

up and down the hill

searching for round rocks

I never found what I wanted

So I made my own

from coffee grounds

and dollar store dino toys

Darby Hollow stretches

from Tunnel Dam

to Camdenton

from thick drawls

to no accent at all

Alyssa Ripley has an MFA in poetry from Rutgers University-Camden. She is from the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri and now lives in Philadelphia.