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.
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