Fall 2019 Creative Writing Contest Winner

By Christine Guaragno, UofM Department of English Student

Did you know that Tennessee has 51 Cracker Barrels
& 103 Waffle Houses & we don’t stop at any of them
because the dog has never been well behaved enough
to pretend he’s a service animal. Like the gerbils
my college roommate kept until she came home
to find Buster had eaten Petunia. We have been driving
since before the morning shows, the radio pulling in & out
through the mountains. Breakfast is sunflower seeds
the husks floating out the window to be whipped away
by 18-wheelers hauling who knows what out of Knoxville.
You have grown tired of John Denver — the country
roads aren’t bringing us home fast enough — & ask me:
Did you know that dogs who fail service training are
called washed out? (Like Tennessee roads in spring
or a stain scrubbed away?) & I say, no. Though, yes,
I know this, because you have told me before. First,
while we were grocery shopping for lunch & you stopped
to admire the heart of palms suspended in olive oil mistaking
them for another kind of heart, artichoke. & so, after you
have finished telling me facts which bring you small
but identifiable joy, I ask, do you know where hearts
of palm come from? You answer no, though, you do.
& you let me tell you again — how they harvest the baby
tree & peel away the fibrous bark to reveal the pith, the heart,
the very center.