Nicole Shepherd is an Appalachian poet from the Smoky Mountains living in Chicago. She writes about the things we don’t always know how to say and the funny ways we try to survive. Her work appears in Maudlin House, The Orange Rose Literary Magazine, and the anthology If You Ever: Poems Inspired by Kim Addonizio.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Check Engine Light

CW: medical trauma, panic symptoms, ambiguous reference to pregnancy loss/fertility grief

After one too many laptop-lit nights,

my body staged a walkout—

the warning light blinking,

but I still said, one more deadline.

Chest tight, too young for a heart attack,

but maybe this is why women die from them.

I refuse to be a statistic.

Vise grip on my chest,

I stagger wide-eyed into sterile halls—

pens chained to clipboards,

dry in a way that alchemizes fear into fury.

The nurse leapt—

unaware she was answering the question,

“Does this dress make me look fat?”

Thin, painfully earnest:

“Don’t panic, we’ll check for the fetal heartbeat.”

I laugh—ugly, breathless.

“There’s no fetal heartbeat.”

She doesn’t flinch.

But I do.

In panic—because of course.

She told me not to give up.

Where is she ten years later,

when there’s still no fetal heartbeat?

A death seed, maybe.

The check engine light’s been on,

but it’s still cheaper

to ignore the rattle

than pay for the fix.

Joy Takes Afterpay Now

How to be that girl

when you feel dead inside.

That’s the ad.

It almost worked.

But that Frankenstein spark went feral.

The story always goes that

real signs of life frighten the creator.

Because I can’t be sucked in—

not to a program

not to a product

not to a lifestyle stitched together by profit.

I know I’m not dead

because I’m so annoyed.

Spite feels like a gift

from my Appalachian predecessors.

We crawled out of the coal mines

and like hell will I go back into the dark.

Did you say coal?

Coal liner is great for an evening look.

Smudged just so—

can’t even see those dark under eye circles.

Post-mortem cosmetologist—

self-made, with the blood red nails—

don’t tell them it’s from clawing

my way out of this coffin

(appropriately tariffed).

The bots saw you hesitate a millisecond—

click here

Joy takes Afterpay now.

Four easy payments to feel again.

And Botox removes worry lines

no one could tell that you can’t breathe.

Is there a serum for this?

A soothing voice telling me I have sex appeal,

just what I need when bombs are dropping.

Glue-on eyelashes too luscious

to read between the headlines.

I know how to handle a snake.

How to be that girl—

full of venom and not die.

I’ll bottle it.

Fangs are the accessory

for the end of the world.