He kept opening ketchup packets, booth, by now, littered
by floppy, stained packets spewed on both sides of
him, sandwiched between table & the straight, grease-laden
bench smeared crimson, a film of it on the napkin,
across the apex of his plate where the Saturn special resided:
abandoned spuds strangling in a ruby drenching of over-easies
splayed on flannel hash, mess of sausage, innards released from
their casing, buttermilk biscuit lapping what rimmed the edge.
Brenda Beardsley's work appears or is forthcoming in The Seneca Review, The Paterson Literary Review, The Last Milkweed Poetry Anthology (Tupelo), DASH, Permafrost, december, Fence, Fence Steaming, The American Journal of Poetry, The Examined Life Journal , Pentimento, and wordgathering, as well as anthologized in COVID Spring, Granite State Pandemic Poems. Her honors include nominated for Best New Poets 2023, Honorable Mention in the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, as well as Honorable Mention in the 2023 Seneca Review Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize, finalist for the 2022 december poetry prize, winner of the 2020 Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poetry Contest, and two-time finalist for the Hunger Mountain Ruth Stone Poetry Prize. Beardsley holds an MFA from Goddard College and writes frequently about social justice.