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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.
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*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  Return to the Kentucky Collection.
Seven, up North, is a big family Eight, if you count the dreamed up border collie that sleeps in bed with me and never sheds elicits not even a whisper of a sneeze from my mother The corners of my lips are veterans at curling upwards in bashful, proud apology at somebody's surprise, "Seven! Oh, I couldn't imagine seven." What of seven, though? Why not seventy or twenty-one thousand or zero? In the mountains, numbers are tricks of the mind, the shapes that remain after leaves have launched their tender bodies to the ground and are stepped on by people who don't pay enough mind Family is everywhere to be found and not nearly often enough discovered but when stumbled upon there is bashful, proud apology in knowing that family is as much the fallen leaf as it is the trees *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/9/22 I learned everything I know about leading story circles from Alexia, Marissa, Maria, and Devyn. They modeled the practice beautifully at the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, where we gathered up a bunch of different tellings of the Headless Annie ghost story and brought a mashup version to life at the student recital. Support flood relief at the Cowan Community Center to promote future storytelling spaces: https://tinyurl.com/cowancreek  Return to the Kentucky Collection.
My dear friend I woke up this morning and the sky was stifling tears I hoped it would cry for you I knew you had planted a whole field yesterday tucked your hopes and good humor into tired ground so overworked that it blew away with a breath of the noon wind If only the day would give you a chance to grow something to show for your sweat I was never born a farmer but my callused fingertips recognize the loamy feeling of the world keeping a secret under its skin and the shy desire to discover it I know how to mean well and fuck it up anyway If only the sky would confess and the seeds grow The clock on the nightstand begged me to close my eyes and lose myself in sleep but is the day still night if you call it that? Is a stranger still friend if you call it that? *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/8/22 I want so badly for my friends to succeed. I remember discovering this skeleton of a building for the first time with a local friend, listening to their cultural vision echo within the tattooed walls. How many other dreamers sidestepped the same holes in this concrete while building hypothetical futures aloud? Could believing in the greatness of what is still yet to come be a communicable condition? I wonder if the people who would come to this place after us could hear our voices resonating... or if not our voices, our hope? This poem is for all the folks out there who plant seeds of hope and goodness around them with no way of telling if anything will grow. I've known so many Appalachians with an artists' sensitivity and an activists' self-sacrificial instinct. Living legends. Support these precious people as they labor restlessly to hold their communities above floodwaters: https://tinyurl.com/ekyfriends  Return to the Kentucky Collection.
I've heard hollers are called such because of the men that holler at your New York State license plate as your car pants up the curves of a busty mountain Hearsay is bourbon for bias like my prejudice of the dark and all the things that grin out at me in it, imagined into existence by every fairytale I'd ever been told and wove into my psyche In like fashion, it is surprising to discover this is not half of what a holler is. The dark gives sunshine its pretty reputation and a time for us to quiet daylight anxieties, for stained hands to rest their calluses, to give stars a stage to dance on and hoot owls an audience to sing to Out of the shadows slide crickets dribbling gossip from between their rubbing forewings a community gathering at which no one breaks bread alone all in ways familiar to greens that rise from sweat and soil in both cases, the dark and the soil breathe life into being The holler is all of this and none of this which is to say that it is the night, the field from which a home springs, forging a people who learned to hold up the sky from the mountains themselves, birthing grubby little hands that play thoughtlessly among wizened trees that once gave their grandmothers fruit to fold into the kind of foods eaten now only in song, ushering new ways into habit This land forgets itself into a contradiction and I am afraid to like it as much as I do because I know better than to flirt with those who are broken in the same places or pretend that I speak the language of the dark or the soil The holler is not for my tongue to name so I let ears speak instead in this place *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/7/22 Hollers are "hollows" wound richly throughout the Appalachian mountains. My cohort of University of North Carolina and Duke scholars lived in what was locally known as the "Graveyard Holler." I remember the thick, lush curtains of kudzu rising up past the rooftops, reminding all that with time, even foreign species become familiar as rain. Such things really feel possible in Letcher County. Support a neighborhood where many things are given space to grow as they recover from historic floods: https://tinyurl.com/ekyhollers  Return to the Kentucky Collection.
Tell me about the railroad buried like a secret racing through the flesh of this town black, almost blue, with daily beating of feet headed somewhere untraceable by tires I am once again pirate, explorer, Chosen One armed only with laundry bag of candy and socks kids remember to bring when running away from home as flirtatious beery breath of the creek chases my loose laces Far-off into the melting sun unnamed bird prays in tongues the railroad corpse sleeps No wonder the trees whisper ghost stories *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/6/22 I walked this windy path to and from the radio station every day. I remember dewy mornings, listening to the sounds of wood creatures chittering or rustling out at me. It was never a lonely walk. Occasionally, one of the community DJs would invite me to sit in live at their late night show. I'd walk this path again, holding the knowledge of lights awake at the station in my mind. I was deathly afraid of the dark and the dogs living in the yard that backed up to the path never failed to make me jump with the sudden nearness of their bark. Cemeteries used to conjure up visions of emaciated hands reaching out of the ground for my ankles. But learning that the path I walked every day was the tarred-over remains of an old railroad track reminded me of that Jackie Chan movie, the one where the woman he loves who is fated to die says that stations make her sad. They remind her of departures. This path reminded me of journeys, old, new, and yet to come. Support the community radio station in rebuilding after the past week of floods: https://tinyurl.com/wmmt887  Return to the Kentucky Collection.
Flowers burst from the abandoned toilet bowls littering the skirts of deep trees with good posture (the kind many other places have forgotten once stood) In a careless way, they invited me to gawk at their sensual queerness I was a teenaged girl learning how to hook a bra right before these bizarrely pretty toilets beautiful in ways only women were women who knew their worth and wore this certainty like their own skins *** eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/5/22 Today's feature is Valerie Ison Horn. On quiet days at the Appalshop, I'd meander down to E. Main Street and poke my head into her office. Not that I could ever really pin her down; she was shoulders-deep in what seemed like everything that made Letcher County Farmers Market run. How does she do it all? I remember wondering as I gazed at the mountains of paperwork on her desk; then again, as she explained the Farmacy produce prescription program; yet again, as she led the community walk down the old railroad path to the market. Support her food access work as Letcher County rebuilds after days of floods: https://tinyurl.com/valhorn  Return to the Kentucky Collection.
Old friends will know that I'm a hoarder of words. In April of 2016, I took up a challenge to write a poem a day (see 30/30) and share it on a public platform. Terrified is too small of a word to describe the tremors in my hand every time I hit "Post"; but somehow, thirty days passed, and I was still here. I emerged with a more thoughtful identity as a poet and a place in the CUPSI (College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational) community. I had hoped for less, but in doing so, surprised myself with the good that so often comes from doing something that scares me every day. This summer, the town of Whitesburg, Kentucky has been sharing its sweet dogs, dancing music, striking views, and good company with me. This will be my sixth week working with Appalshop; my fingerprints can be found on social media posts for the Seedtime Festival, across the WMMT 88.7 soundboard, and all over the tea mugs in the kitchen. I've also been seen heading to play rehearsal with the Cowan Theatre Group (last show is tonight!), tracking down local poets for a potential radio documentary, and working on a ghost story set in a region much like Appalachia. As per my Community Summer obligations with the Robertson Scholars Leadership Program, I will be exploring community - this community - for another two and a half weeks. This place won't let me leave, though. Recently, I switched my plane ticket such that I'll be here a voluntary extra ninth week and there's no good way to explain why to those who find it strange that a city mouse could fall so hard in love with the mountains. As an outsider, I didn't expect to find home in the places that I have. I've found that poetry does well at teaching me about inexplicable things both in and outside of myself, so, starting today, I'll let it speak instead. Follow this poemblog for a daily poem if you'd like to walk with me as I search for the words to explain why.  |
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