Rebecca Kirschbaum
Rebecca Kirschbaum is a Pittsburgh-based writer from Kentucky, with a deeply-rooted family history in Appalachia. Her fiction and nonfiction work about home, sometimes called genre-bending, is often categorized as Southern Gothic and features themes of disenfranchisement, oppression, inequality and outrage. She received a Write Well Award in 2016 and has been featured in journals such as Adelaide, Litro, Nasiona (among others) + on stage at Diversionary Theatre in LA + Gemini Ink Festival in San Antonio.



Kentucky Floodwater

You said Christ’s palms were nailed to a cross 
with Heroin needles, but we all know Jesus ain’t dead. 
I heard the Lord sayeth he wrote the addicts off 
when all the other outside folks stopped watching. 

Then came all the rain, but came no ark. 
While we begged God to notice 
he’d consumed our neighborhood 
with floodwater that looked like gravy, 

dogs licked owners’ muddy, open hands
while they cowered on rooftops 
closer to Heaven than was ordinary 
as everyone tried not to drown. 

Lord, crucifixion is
a death like sinking 
below 
water.

Addiction feels like drowning, 
so we was already flooded, crowned 
by opioid needles deemed newsworthy… 
until forgotten, until too expensive.

Irrelevant, ain’t we
most days? 
Just hardly human heirlooms 
floating in floodwater. 



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