This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones (Poetose Press 2025).
Kentucky Daydreams
my father first met my mother
down an earthen path
on the edges of songtan
we moved states every few years
after her death, running wherever
he thought he could build
a church and prosper, propelled by
his new wife, white, yes,
with a white son of her own
and the only one who didn’t match
was me
but it’s those brisk kentucky nights i think of
when i tell stories from my childhood,
of hide-and-seek with the neighbor kids
the luminescence of fireflies
smeared across our foreheads,
our cheeks, where i watched
meteor showers alone on the roof
and slept in the hammock outside
when the fighting downstairs
was too loud for dreaming
the fields beside our house were spun
into hay every autumn, and behind us
the deep wood full of caves where I could hide
and be my mother’s child again
imagining that the roots of the cedars
spread all the way to her grave in wawbeek
and that the water from the creeks i waded in
would find their way to the oceans
turn to steam
cradle us both in the clouds
and fall again
on the mountains of korea
Soon Jones (they/them) is a Korean-American lesbian poet and writer raised in the rural countryside of the American South. They are a Lambda Literary Fellow with an MFA from Oklahoma State University. Their work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Denver Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Moon City Review, and others, and their debut collection, These Aren’t My Woods Anymore, is out now from Poetose Press. When not writing poems or working on cars, you can find Soon going on long walks through nature or stargazing.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all. 
