I love meat and potatoes
like a good Irish girl
the tuber ties
of my DNA are deep and distant
one hundred and seventy-seven years and
three thousand five hundred miles away
my great great grandmother
burst fighting into a blighted world
from the womb of a woman
married to an Irish farmer
her earliest memories
watching her father
work land stolen from his father
he was allowed to rent back
from absent nobility
watching potatoes she helped dig out
turn poison and disintegrate
to ash in her mother’s hands
watching her mother’s tears
drown clutched rosary beads
watching her father look at her
like the fairies made her a girl
when he so badly needed a boy
watching the cows march away
at gunpoint to be sold
for someone else’s pocket
for someone else to eat
watching her people disappear
I’ll take mine mashed
with salt, butter, and milk
certified angus beef on the side
and none of it for granted
Beth Mulcahy (she/her), a Gen X-er from Michigan, lives in Ohio where she works for a company that provides technology to people without natural speech. She writes poetry, fiction, memoir, and dreams about visiting Scotland. Her work has appeared in various journals. Check out her latest publications at https://linktr.ee/mulcahea.