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Tennessee Hill
​

WE BUY BROKEN GOLD
 
On my early commute, I pass the local pawn shop:
WE BUY BROKEN GOLD
 
hangs in dawn-light on the marquee.
This is the pawn shop where my brother bought those guns
 
& sold those others. For fluidity’s sake I imagine
it’s also the shop where my aunt sold
 
her mother’s diamonds, first-edition books
& her father’s precious coins then told us she’d been robbed.
 
My brother is a shop-fly, always about the place.
In all my years, I’ve never gone in. When I make excuses
 
for them, I chalk it up to rent money or inherited depressions.
When I think to make excuses for myself, I’m reminded
 
of just how unflattering it can be to know yourself
& know most of your own mistakes have rotten cores. Afterall,
 
I’ve let my husband hang stuffed deer & ducks on the garage wall.
I’m the kind of woman that when sunspots shine
 
against my thigh as I drive in the mooncast to work, I almost
always think it’s dirt & try to wipe the light away. 




Tennessee Hill is a 2022 Gregory Djanikian scholar and holds an MFA from North Carolina State University. She has been featured in Best New Poets, POETRY, Beloit Poetry Journal, THRUSH, and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming from Nimrod, Fugue, and Arkansas International. She won the 2020 Porter House Review Editor’s Poetry Prize and serves as Poetry editor for Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. She lives and teaches in Houston.




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