“Two Villanelles,” Poems, Emilee Kinney

Another year in which I disappoint you

You tell me this is not the life you wanted, but I can still taste it—

pine branch stretches my mouth, resin coats my teeth—

didn’t you hope for this place to become a part of me?

In winter: we count bubbles of boiled sap,

bathe in sweet steam with snowfall at our backs,

after everything, I can still taste it.

In fall: we lick fudge bowls too soon, spear

our hands into the thick mass of copper kettles—

you hope I will learn this ritual.

In summer: we pocket pie berries, smear

our lips with crushed cran-, rasp-, and blue,

after everything, I can still taste it.

In spring: we busy restless hands with canning, stain

paper labels with blood from sliced thumbs—

you hope for my red print alongside generations’

but my body was not built for making, only to sever

tight pheasant bellies, the steady slide of a hook knife,

crabapples mashed in bootsoles, honeysuckle stashed

in my cheek—I can taste it. You still hope I’ll learn my place.

Reddit Response to Why are Midwest Men So Angry?     

If I had to guess,

rust-belt rage is born from quiet,

restless pride despite having less

time, money, people to talk to;

that four-treeline-prison called home.

If I had to guess,

I’d say it lives in the blueblack of broken

fingernails, sliced skin, the bitter cold.

Driven by pride despite having less

sons this generation—relying

on their daughters to drive nails, haul wood.

If I had to guess,

it’s women who work

like them, better than them, that hurt

their pride despite having less

parental obligations, weeks of migraine-vomit-blood,

expectations to carry, to birth. Their rage could fill

a spoon compared to wives, to mothers, if I had to guess,

the women are angry too—their pride a quiet rage despite having less.

Emilee Kinney is a poet from rural Michigan. She received her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi where she served as the Associate Poetry Editor for Mississippi Review. She holds an MFA from SIU Carbondale, and her work has been anthologized in Savor: Poems for the Tongue and in The Book of Jobs: Poems about Work. She is listed as a finalist for Driftwood's 2024 Poetry Prize, and most recently, a winner of AWP's 2026 Intro Journals Project. Her poems have been published in Passages North, West Trestle Review, THE SHORE, SWWIM, and elsewhere.