Turn over the ruined cheeks of the mountaintops to give their lungs some sun the earth bones crackle as it coughs up its blackened stomach and you feel impolite as you stare at the many deaths its died feel like it, the displaced beggar and you, the passerby guilty in your own health you have nothing in your pocket but a handful of seeds and maybe a few mouthfuls of her heart left over from last night they might grow, yet you lay them down and hurry away We don't have much longer on this earth, might as well leave something pretty behind Return to the Kentucky Collection.
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The lights that move dreamily across the rock face remind me of all the people I used to be in love with and I almost believe in wood fairies again. The folk magic of these soft tides meander over my shoulders, run their chilly fingers through my hair & the quiet moment of isolation in this swimming hole turns me into a stereotype, wishing madly that this belonged to me and I belonged to it. Return to the Kentucky Collection.
i wanted to love you yesterday but you were too far down the block i was too shy to call out to you and disturb the peace or try to with this voice i was given i didn’t know your name but i was going to. we were going to cross paths and dance around each other and apologize too many times and then start laughing a truck was going to cough pointedly up the road and remind us that we were in public i was going to forget what i was saying and you were going to glance down at your watch and have to get going and i was going to watch you walk away the sun was going to set on time and i was going to linger in the parking lot among the ghosts of the saturday farmer’s market and wonder if you lived here i was going to be surprised when you played the fiddle at the bar that lost its liquor license and forget your name when i talked to you again and find that you had forgotten my face you were going to be flushed with drinking in the crowd and i was going to wish i were old enough to say something cool or young enough to hold your attention but then you were going to notice my skirt and i was going to remind you that we met on the street and we would remember together i was going to say that i write poetry and you were going to think that was cool, or at least i was going to think you said because it was so loud in there i was going to compliment your music, but really mean that i thought you were beautiful and maybe you were what appalachia was all about after all we were going to meet one last time at the vigil, this time through tears in your case and weariness in mine our hands were going to smile into each other as the prayer began and i would forget your name when you confessed how lucky you felt to be alive even as our people were being lowered back into the earth in a city where most of us had never been the bridge was going to become our bar and we would still be gay but maybe something greater too the summer was going to end, i was going to go to a place my tongue is used to calling home and forget your face but remember your fiddle and hope you would know me if i ever made it back to the mountains but you didn’t live in whitesburg and i didn’t call your name and you went to a bar in a city i’ve never been to as i helped set the table here and you drank a cup of what i still can’t touch and dance a dance we might have danced if things were different and i start writing this poem as you go to a place our tongues forget to call home Inspired by Alexis Pauline Gumbs & the city of Whitesburg Return to the Kentucky Collection.
Clouds settle heavy on my chest guess I'm unused to this thin air placing me closer to heaven I don't know what to make of all this perfection the proximity makes me feel small and ugly like unripe crop; firm corn in the mouths of fools this place can see right through me *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 9/1/22 I once watched some boys fishing off the side of this bridge. I shouted out my hope that they catch a Big One and they grinned back at me through their matching sunburns. Another time, I was on my way home after a sticky day in Appalshop and the skies grayed and rumbled. I had taken an unusual route that day, a small adventure that took a dramatic turn as the wind picked up and blew dust like arrows against my calves and face. A microburst, I would learn later as I trudged home, fully soaked, my sandals just puddles strapped to my feet. The news cycle churns on, but there are whole communities like Whitesburg in eastern Kentucky that are still picking up after the devastation of record-breaking flooding. Support good memory-making for young summertime bridgefishers https://tinyurl.com/ekyhollers Return to the Kentucky Collection.
As tempers rise, popcorn hearts crackle free from their shells the smooth skin of this town puckers under rainless clouds Hell has never felt closer so far above sea level There is a sweating mug of unmarked tea insensitively exhaling on every damp neck; it’s sitting on my desk and I think how incriminating it must be to leave tea rings where fighting words might lay bare if only I had the will to move in this intolerable heat *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/27/22 Heat makes us all a bit itchy. This is a photo of my desk in the staff room of WMMT 88.7. If you have donated to Eastern Kentucky flood relief at any of the links I've shared in this poetry campaign so far, thank you so much for your love to my friends. Let me know if you have; I want to send you a handwritten copy of one of the Kentucky Collection poems on a plantable card. If you have donated to multiple groups, thank you THANK YOU and I'll send you as many plantable poems as you have donated. Together, we can help Appalachia (and your yard) bloom after the rain. Support Possum Radio in getting back on air: https://tinyurl.com/wmmt887 Return to the Kentucky Collection.
set fire to the night the Christmas sparkles cried in bell-like voices tangling with raw psychiatry of string band and square dance of ballad and craftsman a coming-together of hands clasping a secret glow between bodies like cupped fireflies *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/23/22 I first learned to square dance at the Seedtime on the Cumberland festival. Under the tent, the whirling bodies were delighting instead of laboring under the layers of summer breath. The caller's voice swung us into a sashay, then a do si do. Support a future of dance and communal artistry in Appalachia after the devastating late July floods: https://tinyurl.com/seedtimefest Return to the Kentucky Collection.
Sweat gathers like armful of crushed flowers buffing the air with smoke and antiquity Black gold runs feral through these sun-beaten bodies won't anyone just give them work? *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/21/22 Herby wanted to show me something. We hopped into a car and zoomed around winding roads. We passed several signs marking mouths of hollers twisting up the slope; I read them aloud as we went. There were so many great names. He explained how there were many ways to pronounce a word. Hurricane can be hurrukin. We pulled up alongside a coal sorting plant and he pointed out different features of the facility. Runoff from processing coal flows downstream, pools in different bodies of water. I thought the interconnectedness of industry and nature, livelihood and neighborhood, was as poetic as the human body system. Perhaps this kind of perspective is the gift of having a filmmaker be your guide. I filled several pages of my journal with Herby's knowledge. Maybe sometime I'll dig it out from my stack and revisit my notes from that day. Support master storytellers like Herby who share their homes with open hearts as they recover from the late July floods: https://tinyurl.com/herbysmith Return to the Kentucky Collection.
*Sometimes, I write songs instead of poems. This is one of those times. **Wow, chords too? Yeah, buddy. A You and me Bm were born to be here together A You and me E my friend A I will come back Bm to find you whenever A E A you need a kind hand A Years have passed by D wonder if they miss me A E I will be home soon A When I met you D my heartache went and left me A E A Right here's where I choose A F#m G#dim A to make a home G#dim F#m A in the mountains A F#m G#dim A G#dim And to find kin in F#m A your friends A F#m G#dim A G#dim F#m A The road was long 'fore I got here A E A now I find it hard to go You and me could've missed this forever You and me my friend Thankful for the blunders that brought me here to take your hand I must go on please don't forget me I will be home soon Home was a place 'til God gave me today Right now's when I choose to make a home in the mountains And to find kin in your friends The road was long 'fore I got here now here I hope to rest You and me will get through whatever You and me my friend I will come back to find you so never let go of my hand and I'll make a home in the mountains and I'll find kin in my friends The road was long 'fore I got here but I'd travel it again *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/17/22 One of my dearest experiences in Whitesburg, KY was getting to be part of the Cowan Creek Community Theater production of story-play "Roots & Branches." This intergenerational cast told the rooted-in-life story of a girl who reluctantly visits her ancestral Appalachian home and in doing so, finds community, homegrown music, shared cultural history, and good food. Behind the scenes, I was introduced to deviled eggs and venison backstrap and made cherished friends in fellow bandmates Brandon and Callie, Kevin, Alyssa, fearless director Miss Carol, and so many others. This song is for them. Support more art-makers as they restore their home after devastating floods: www.tinyurl.com/cowancreek Return to the Kentucky Collection.
it's incredible how the dark changes things, isn't it? All the green things that fill the air are lipsticked thick with gorgeous stink of creek river, purpled by the night The sweet stray you thought was your friend is now howling in time with your flickering pulse a bump in the night sends the sleeping bitch in the yard cage barking and your skirt is getting tortured into thread as your slippers stumble over air There is no space for the charming town you thought you'd tamed earlier that day the mountains they tame you though you thought a wild child would slip right into place with the dusky shadows You realize with new clarity what someone told you earlier when it was safe the trail you are walking alone is the unmarked grave of a railroad You wonder if the imperfectly glowing faces of foliage are ghosts watching you pass You wonder if your ghosts are scarier but they are already dissolved into the potion this town is fixing they get taken out in bodybags by the haunts of this place the windows of what you realize is county jail rattles its bars at you bares its fangs and dares your eyes to search the dark for what might be footsteps A lot of old history molds on your bones, you know turns you into something hairy *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/16/22 Summertime in the mountains blurs the boundaries between truth and tale. I could never steel my nerves long enough to not run the last bend home. In the summer of 2016, I was writing a ghost novel based in an imaginary mountain town influenced by oral stories I collected from folks I met around Letcher County. I remember meeting a fellow who professed to be a ghost hunter out on the deck behind Summit City. He showed me videos of previous expeditions with his team and regaled me with the bloody story of the Hatfield-McCoy family feud, arguing that conflicts of such magnitude leave traces behind on the grounds they play. If true, doesn't that make the triumph of a community's shared joy and trust that much more worthy? The masterwork of nighttime tellings lies in knowing that our anxieties dissipate with laughter among our friends. If there is evidence of past grief, let me point you to present evidence of grace. Support the folks creating hope in the next chapter of rebuilding after the late July floods: https://tinyurl.com/summitcity Return to the Kentucky Collection.
and in the end, it turns out
the quiet is what gets me, wedged like the tongue of a first kiss lower lip, dusky pink of a mountain's collarbone we scrambled up upper lip, sky I feel like I should say something to chase back the awkwardness, but at that moment, I forget how to speak The unblinking sun beats me at a staring contest I am naked as an offering coming here thinking that dignity was in being clothed but there is some reductionist beauty stripping away layers of me until there is nothing for my bones to offer but surrender *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/11/22 The top of Pine Mountain reminds me of the limitless first moments of falling in love; which is to say, falling upwards, toward so much possibility. Something about clambering up a steep incline, cursing the slippery underside of your sandals and feeling your fingernails fill up with soil, makes reaching the peak a surprise every time. But can a summit be a surprise if it also reminds me of all the times I've ever looked at a person and felt my heart swell? I remember taking this picture in the company of Lucy, Wilson, and Ian--fellow Robertson scholars in our 2016 Whitesburg cohort--and thinking that, no matter what, they were woven into the beautiful memory of this sweaty moment at Mars Rock. I remember splashing around Wiley's Last Resort with Brandon, tugging a peddleboat into the lake as our much drier friends tsk'ed at us from the dock. I remember pretending to be a goat walking nearly perpendicular to the surface I was standing on because Nathan, already far ahead of me, had chosen the toughest way up. Support good memory-making, both past and future, in a region recovering from devastating floodwaters: https://tinyurl.com/ekysummits |