Those Days
by Karen Kilcup
Those spaghetti-and-ziti days, cockroaches-in-the-sink, fat-and-black-as-kalamata-olives days, those peanut-butter-and-jelly days, those hope-you-never-have-to-eat-peanut-butter-again days, you’re-lucky-to-have-peanut-butter days, those when-your-best-friend’s-Catholic-mother-who-kicked-you-out-of-her-basement-apartment-because-you-had-a-male-visitor-overnight days, those $2400-a-year days, you-were-young-so-it-shouldn’t-have-mattered-much days, you-were-strong-days, you-didn’t-need-health-insurance days, those pre-computer days, you-didn’t-check-your-cellphone days. Those hold-your-car-keys-between-your-fingers-as-you-walked-from-the-parking-lot-to-your-city-apartment days and nights.
Raised on a farm in the area that local Abenaki people called Quascacunquen, Karen Kilcup is the Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor Emerita at UNC Greensboro. Her numerous awards and honors include a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Kilcup’s book The Art of Restoration (2023) was awarded the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, and her chapbook, Red Appetite (2023), received the 2022 Helen Kay Poetry Chapbook Prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has a second chapbook, Black Nebula (2023), and a second full-length collection, Feathers and Wedges (2024).