A POEM FROM POKEBERRY PSALMS
BY JENNY KEENER
M
eet Jenny Keener, an Appalachian poet, social worker, and amazing storyteller. Jenny said, “My poems are rooted in the hills of West Virginia, shaped by working-class lives, community, resilience, and the beauty
found in ordinary moments. Our friend, Melody Urbanic, recommends everyone check out Jenny’s poems, Pokeberry Psalms, if you haven’t already. Many, including Melody, have recommended her as the next West Virginia Poet Laureate. “If you want to support Appalachia/West Virginia artists, she’s the real deal.”
Google Pokeberry Psalms for more of her poems! Landscaping Several years ago, the old rosebush beside my porch simply quit. No yellowing leaves. No warning. No dramatic last bloom. It didn’t even have the courtesy to leave a note.
Dyeing T-shirts. Watching cedar waxwings arrive like gossiping relatives the minute the berries turned dark. The pokeberry grew. And grew.
The next spring it was a memory.
And grew.
up came a stalk the color of creek minnows and bruised plums, green and purple, bright as a promise.
By August, it stood taller than me, thick as a sapling, branches sagging beneath clusters of impossible brilliant purple.
I knew it immediately.
The raccoons under the porch slept in its shade.
Pokeberry.
The birds nested in it.
My old friend from Frametown.
The bees worked the flowers.
Most folks see pokeberry and start reaching for Roundup.
Not one thing asked me for fertilizer.
They call it a weed.
Not one thing asked me for water.
Poison. Trash. Bleh. But I’ve never trusted people who think usefulness is the same thing as worth.
AUG 2026
Painting cardboard.
One spring it was a rosebush.
Then out of the bare dirt,
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Making ink.
I looked at that little shoot and saw my whole childhood coming up through the mulch. I remembered crushing berries between my fingers until my hands looked stained with violet.
Not one thing required pruning, spraying, or fussing. The pokeberry simply lived, which is more than can be said for half the plants sold in garden centers. Last summer I showed Hazel how to crush the berries. Watched her fingers turn violet.
Watched her discover the same small magic that once stained mine. And that seems important somehow. That a plant everybody chops carried a memory all the way from a Braxton County hillside to a suburban front porch, just so a little girl could learn the color of her own inheritance. The bush comes every year now. Tall as an infidelity rumor. Bright as cold-packed raspberries. A monument to my bad landscaping decisions. Every time I look at it, I smile. And every time my neighbors look at it, I suspect they wonder what sort of person lets such an abomination grow in her front yard. The answer is simple. The kind of person who has learned that sometimes the things the world calls weeds are the very things that feed the birds, shelter the wild creatures, carry our stories, and come back exactly when they’re needed. – Jenny