Poem

Collegiate Poetus (Family: Egotistae)

These aspiring writers,
gathered poets,
form like anthills,
busy workers
at political correctness,
carefully carrying granules
of dirt and scraps of metaphor.

They are everywhere,
crawling, darting
from sidewalk cracks
and coffee houses.
They congregate
on college campus malls,
can lift a hundred times
their weight in redundancy.

But be careful
how you wield that
hard, country sensibility
not to disturb their habitat,
their tiny burrows,
colonies of complacency.
Walk lightly when wearing
your thick-soled
brogans of criticism,
for open toes
bruise easily
in Birkenstocks.

Poem

Bee Swarm

The air was quiet in the back porch sun,
save for what I though was a breeze
drifting down from the treetops where I sat.
So soft at first, I didn’t notice that
the whisper was not whistling branches,
not the rasp of twig on limb,
but a droning buzz drawing closer.
Something zipped past my ear,
catching my lazy eyes in the direction
of an approaching swarm of honey bees.
I bolted from the concrete steps,
spun and wove around like a drunken boxer,
swatting the air hastily as if stung.

This roiling fist of wings, enveloping,
swirled instead around a center,
an atomic nucleus, as the queen
herded her hive to a larger nest.
Around the eaves of my house they clung,
rolled in the air like cloud vapors, rose
faster than I could run around to
the front yard to watch them continue,
down the driveway, across the road,
neighbors wondering what I was chasing.
Barefoot and panting for breath, I watched
the glistening coil disappear into the woods.
I longed to sprout cellophane wings,
to follow her secret pheromone trail
where a hollow tree or rock crevice
waited for her and her horde.

Poem

Hunter, Hunted, and Mountain Biker

On the back of Pinnacle Mountain,
down roads where you rarely see
people traveling about,
rocks rise out of the gravel and dirt
like bony spines of ancient dinosaurs,
and trees are hunched and gnarled,
limbs twisted by winter winds,
now brushy and dark green
with oak leaves and acorns.

Skidding around a corner,
a dark figure on all fours
catches my eye
and locks my brakes.
Ten yards ahead,
in a sunlit patch of road,
dark bristly fur,
too big to be a dog,
the brown nose gives away
the bear cub’s identity.

But mine must have been confusing
to him, maybe never having seen
a boy on a bike,
round wheels instead of legs
on a steel-framed skeleton carcass.
What are wheels to a creature
who can climb rocky crags
and steep ridges
I wouldn’t attempt to clamor up?

----- Instinct identified me well enough,
----- and with a low moan, the cub
----- runs back into the dark green shadows.
----- I didn’t stick around to meet his mother.


The next week I met its poacher
in a red and faded pick up truck
creeping up the same road, slowly.
A gray, long-eared hound dog,
skin and bones, wearing a body collar,
was bolted by a leash to the hood.
Standing with a purpose, it leaned forward
like a rock climber, pulling on her lead rope,
a surfer on a Chevrolet wave,
sniffing the air, first one way,
and then the next.

The man looked just as confused
as the bear the previous day
to see a boy on a bike,
coming down the mountain,
out here where his thoughts
had possessed the solitary wilderness.
As we passed each other
on the narrow, rutted road,
he lifted his hand.
I nodded my head and smiled,
caught a glint of corn liquor
in his red and faded eyes.

----- We momentarily shared the silence,
----- save for the whirring and creaking
----- of his 4-wheel drive,
----- and then we were masters
----- of our surroundings once again.

from Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel 11 (Fall 2004) 25

Poem

No Regret

When life gets easier
and the corners of my mind
stop spinning from frustration,
I will shine like city lights
off in the distance
of a desert night.

----- I will laugh with my head back
----- so my white teeth show
----- the color in my cheeks.

When life is less bitter
and the hobgoblins of little minds
fade into the background static,
I will ring like wedding bells
on a pristine afternoon
with a tone clear and warm.

----- Everyone is holding hands
----- and the air is swirling
----- with apple blossoms and honey bees.

When everything is going right
and the black clouds of despair
are brushed away like dusty cobwebs,

----- will you run with me
----- down highway 64
----- to the county line, and beyond,
----- peel the past from our foreheads,
----- let the wind catch our innocence,
----- and listen to the steel belts play
----- a back-beat rhythm
----- to a traveling tune?

When it is all over,
and the pain no longer covers
my eyes with a jaded veil,

----- I will cast my bitterness
----- into the fiery furnace
----- and ride the sooty smoke
----- like a drunken Phoenix
----- into the topaz-blue sky.
---------- And as I look down
---------- at my pallid reflection
---------- will I say, without doubt
---------- that I had a good life?

from The Broad River Review 36 (Spring 2004) 21.

Poem

Todd, NC

Elkland, once a boom town of Watauga County,
where the railroad from Abingdon ended
to drop off passengers and load timber.
The giant engines spun on a turntable
to head back the other way.

Hotels, stores, banks, and taxi service
sprung up like mushrooms in a narrow valley,
shared by the South Fork of the New River.
Loggers and saw mills made their truck ready
to be hauled back the other way.

With the forests stripped of their hardwoods,
the Virginia-Carolina came less frequently
until, nothing to haul and no one to bring,
like locusts they swarmed to other prospects,
to make their living in other ways.

The railroad gone, the tracks were taken up,
its steel sold cheaply to the Japanese,
just like New York’s Sixth Avenue El,
scrap metal turned to weapons of warfare
used against our own Pacific Fleet
to send our boys to a watery grave.

Poem

Peoria, Texas, March 22, 1891

After some delay I am finally
getting around to writing you.
Them seeds and beans come through
all right. I am very thankful.
People are later planting this spring.
We had a big snow the first of March,
but prospects are still good for
at least a tolerable early crop.

I would like to see you out here
this fall, or later in the summer
when I can feed you on melons
from the patch I’m going to plant
behind the new school house.
You promised to come soon and
it is about time you was deciding,
but I fear that promises is all I have.

Tell your brother John I said
for him to come out here to east Texas
where he can farm right for a change
instead of plowing on rocky hillsides,
where he can get land so level and rich
it will make his eyes water to look.
A man can make an honest living out here,
can get all the work and land he wants.

Write me a long letter about home.
Give me all the news from Sevier County.
Tell your family I think of them often,
but don’t hug your sisters too hard
for they sometimes giggle and break wind.
Right now I’m sure you are all in bed asleep
under the same moon that’s full as a dinner plate.
I hope you are sleeping peaceful.

You asked about my health this winter.
After I got accustomed to the weather
which is about as cold as any in Tennessee,
I manage to eat well enough, though I miss
your cooking, your biscuits, and your smile.
I still am the tallest man in town,
and have not lost weight since last we met.
Board and washing is included in my wages,
but not a woman’s care.

I lifted your letter out of the office on the 20th.
Let me hear from you soon so I can plan.
If you want to come ahead I will assist you.
The country’s health and wages are all right.
We will have our own pastor and
a nice new church at the end of town.
My land will be six miles west of Hillsboro,
and two miles south of Peoria
when the deed comes through.
But a man can only wait for so long.
I promised your dear Maw I would
take care of you should you come.
Bring me all the news of home yourself.

Yours,
J.B. Sherfly

Poem

Under the Couch

A Barbie shoe, eleven cents for the offering,
half a Nilla wafer and three bobby pins.
A giant cockroach, belly up
to preaching the evils of Black Jack.
Two squares of Cap'n Crunch,
a subscription card to Good Housekeeping, "Uh-huh!"

A gingerbread man from Candyland,
balled-up foil wrappers of Hershey Kisses.
A broken crayon, Hot Magenta,
a tube of Chapstick I'd been missing.
Beer bottle caps, a toe nail clipping,
and the dust-bunny choir sang a soft, "Amen."

Poem

Durazno Dulce


It's January,
and I'm eating a ripe peach.
The cool flesh quenches me
like a South Carolina breeze
off the distant mountain ridges.
I can almost taste the sweet clover
growing between the orchard rows
when I close my eyes and chew slowly.

It's funny,
that this fuzzy, half-eaten fruit
is from the country of Chile
and not from Greer, or Cooley Springs.
Though I've been down Highway 25,
long before it turned four-lane,
I can't quite picture the towering Andes
or feel the wind from their snow-capped peaks.

Poem

Cold

Starts with the wind,
distantly
howling and scraping
blindly
through skeleton trees,
rolling
down the mountain,
gaining momentum,
darkly
drawing the night closer,
slaps
against our clapboard house,
squeezing
creaks and moans,
twists
frame and rafters,
foundation footings.

A sudden silence,
quietly
slides like mercury
under doors,
window panes,
along hushed floors,
climbs
my footboard,
slips
under the corners,
quilted covers,
curling
around my toes,
settling
among bare-boned ankles,
siphons
what little warmth
can cling to me.

Poem

Grandma’s Kitchen

My wife won’t stop
for mom and pop restaurants,
but rather enjoys the consistency,
the glossy, dim-lit sterility
of Outback and Applebee’s.

One cold Christmas day,
traveling back from my folks,
the only sit-down place open
for miles in any direction
was Grandma’s Kitchen.

A little barn-framed building,
next to a truck stop where
the pavement ended in ruts
and the air was chicken-fried.
I was ready to claim my stake.

“She’s not my Grandma,”
my wife said with upturned brow,
“probably some sweaty cook
dropping ashes in the French fries,
scratching himself with a spatula.”

I just looked solemnly out the window,
thought of corn bread and beans
and the coffee I was about to receive.
While she drove away in my truck, I thought,
she must not be that hungry.

Poem

Good Evening, Suicide

Evening rushes in on blue sky veins,
throbbing parallel lines of life
pushed against the sharp autumn sunset.
They spill their secrets to the horizon,
bleeding oak red over the shaded hills.
Leaves fall limp to twilight’s breath,
sink slowly to the ground as slit wrists.
Its tepid bath grows a moonless dark.
The winter stars slip through the drain
when I’m not looking.

from Iodine Poetry Journal 7:2 (Fall/Winter 2006/2007) 17.

Poem

The Summer Camp of Love

I was so high that summer
- - - - - The world was unclouded and bright
- - - - - - - - -Taking hits off the Holy Spirit
- - - - - - - - - at the Chapel Woods campfires
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Getting ready for the bridegroom
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Trimming our wicks, we knew
- - - - - - - - - He was coming with sound of trumpets
- - - - - - - - - And we would forever stand atoned.
- - - - - For those who repented of their sins,
cast their earthly vices aside,
- - - - - were the first to get stoned.

from Iodine Poetry Journal 9:2 (Fall/Winter 2008/2009) 40.

Poem

Aunt Beulah Sounds Off

A pioneer-island in a world that has
no use for pioneers – the unsplit rock
of Fundamentalism, calomel
clan-virtues, clannish vices, fiddle tunes
and a hard God.
--Stephen Vincent Benét

Don't call us backward.
We walk in the same direction as you,
just not in such a hurry to discard
the old for the new.
We're content with our pace, thank you.

Sure, while you may have been the first
on your block to listen to your records in stereo,
to install an 8-track player in your Pinto,
to fill your CD tower with the latest music,
we were already making our own,
hewing out tunes on fiddle, dulcimer, and banjo,
not from woofers or tweeters, but from our own hands it flowed.

Restless and discontent city-folk
with your throw-away culture,
media-stoked and commercially corrupt,
defiling your identity,
defining yourselves with store-bought trinkets,
and what you can't buy right away, you rent,
no money down and take years and years to pay.
I'm sorry, but that's just not our way.

And we aren't so out of touch
that we don't know
about microwave ovens and bread machines,
but biscuits rise better
in four hundred degrees
of cast iron and oak kindling.
Microwaves are good for warming coffee,
but not cold kitchens in winter.
As for chopping firewood, my callused hands can deal with the splinters.

Tradition is our identity,
and change does come slow, I'll admit.
But when it does, we don't forget
how we were raised, preserving,
passing on the memories
of the way things used to be.
You say it's not your bag, and that's just fine with me.

in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel 7 (Fall 1999) 27.

Poem

Posteriors in Perspective

festive
festoons of
fabulous fannies
down the sidewalk
march proudly behind
women who know
what a caboose is

pedaling
bicycle buns
perch precariously
on tiny padded pedestals
and watch from above
while the legs
get all the credit

shivering
skinny dipping
bare white buns
shining in the sun
laughing, swimming
not so secretly
among sweet shrubs
and the summer shade
of rhododendrons

wonderful
wide loads
dimple-cheeked thighs
wearing elastic pants
wandering the aisles
at Wal-Mart
and whispering
against one another
as they brush past
with their shopping carts

Daisy Dukes
double take
low riding and
dropping out the back
should be a sin
mere inches of ragged
Levi demons
daringly dressed or
denim deficient?
it depends on the degree
of degradation

Poem

Hi-Fi Stereotype

“And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds,
and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our
God hast punished us less than our
iniquities deserve and hast given us
such deliverance as this;”
Ezra 9:13

When John Boorman directed
Ned Beatty to drop his pants
and squeal like a pig for
local actors pretending to be
some crazed mountain men,
dirty, bent with bestiality
(“If there were ever any
degenerate red-necks,
they are these two”),
did they think that
somewhere in those
twisted hills,
those hollows
of American darkness
crawled the real thing,
toothless crackers,
moonshine-drinkin’
hillbilly inbreds
whose sole desire
was to gleefully molest
unsuspecting city folk,
young men who just wanted
to canoe a little white water?

No Shucking The Corn,
no Old Joe Clark,
just wicked crackling,
sharp cutting chords,
banjo strings plucking
in the background,
over the rapid’s roar.
As the water carried them,
they paddled urgently,
with fearful and tense bodies,
peering into the forest’s edge,
surrounded on both sides
with the unfamiliar, therefore evil.
You know he’s coming for you,
Lucifer of the mountain laurels,
Beelzebub of the brambles,
while Eric Weissberg
picks his way through
brand-new Pioneer
surround-sound speakers.
I never knew a banjo could make
such a harrowing sound.
Paddle faster.

Poem

A Vexing Conundrum

so much depends
on what?

and who left the
wheel barrow

out in the rain
rusting

red while they sat
inside

dreaming of chicken
dinners?

Poem

Illumination, To Everything Turn

Light is given out in unequal measures,
doled out hastily and without favor.
It is taken back sometimes just as quickly
as the setting sun or a final breath.

It screams through morning curtains,
cold, hungry, and wanting to be held,
sings with the sweetness of a mother’s caress,
and dances from windowsill to front porch steps.

The warm air holds its reflected glow,
sunning bicycles in the front yard,
burns red as a scraped-knee afternoon,
as driveway stones sweat in the humidity.

Serendipity is the cool kiss of evening,
while amber rays wink around tree branches.
It sifts through rusty back porch screens, and rests
with content like old lacquer on ladder-back chairs.

But the rising moon has a sad green glow,
shining through door cracks with a wave of dismay.
It washes cold around the footboard with deference,
and as the tide retreats back from where it came,
it settles on the skin like a froth of quilted lead.

in The Broad River Review 37 (Spring 2005) 71.

Poem

Ham Hocks

While eating a funnel cake I saw him,
walking down from the uphill side of Main
where factory houses are stacked like cards.
That day he must have felt a little out of place
with the starched collars and tourist faces
of the Harland County Apple Festival,
tall, gray hair in a cowlick, wearing work boots
and overalls without a shirt,
looking like he had just awakened
from a third-shift-induced slumber.

I sat on a curb as he crossed the street
to a hippie vendor counting change.
"Where are your ham hocks?" he asked,
clearing sawdust from his throat with a loud hawk,
looking red-eyed and clearly confused.

"We sell hammocks, man – woven by Mayan Indians,"
the vendor replied with a faint smile and a nervous tug
on the shirttail of his sweater.

He spat on the ground beside him.
"I read your sign from my front porch,
walked all the way down the hill...,
aimin' to get me some ham hocks."
Hands in his pockets, the long-haired vendor
only shrugged his shoulders and smiled again.

The old man walked out into the street
among the crowds of balloons and baby strollers,
squinted his eyes at the vendor's sign above,
and scratched the stubble on the end of his chin.
He walked up to the booth once more,
stooping to get under the canvas awning.
"So you don't sell ham hocks then?"
he asked again in a querulous voice.

"Nope," the vendor answered with finality
and, almost mockingly, asked
"What are ham hocks?"

With a look like a slap in the face,
the old man backed away, bumping clumsily
into a young couple eating candy apples.
I turned to sneeze,
blowing powdered sugar off my paper plate,
but lifted my head in time to observe
the old man slip behind the vendor's booth
unnoticed by others,
hook the toe of his brogan
around a corner pole.
The falling canvas captured
the hippie and two customers
as a cowlick head of hair
sauntered away, disappearing
behind a bee-swarmed dumpster.

in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel 7 (Fall 1999) 26.

Poem

Love and Less

Somewhere between Rolling Rocks
and morning light,
between neck and collar bone,
piecemeal tokens of
flowering purple affection,
touched lightly with a morning buzz
and your limp arm over
my wrinkled consciousness.

Somewhere between Sunday morning
and sausage biscuits,
the cashier at Hardee's
with a careful glance,
feigning apathetic eyes
over the rim of her thick glasses,
hands us our tray,
gives away what she really thinks
of missing buttons
and my lipstick collar,
concealing gleanings
of that glaucous night before.

We sit, wondering and knowing
in a window booth,
silently chewing the sobering direction.
Clarity advances
with each church-bell chime
from First Baptist down the street,
like a grandfather clock,
and our seconds together compete
against throbbing temples and
an almost soothing indifference,
telling us our time has been eaten
to tabletop crumbs.

I left you my phone number
and you left me no choice
but to leave you, back turned,
at the steps to your apartment.
Neither one of us knew
where it would go, or end,
from free beer and an invitation.
After a week of turning away,
my memories turn a lighter hue
in compliment with the
blood-shade bruises in the mirror.
You fade to pallid skin in my mind.

in The Broad River Review 35 (Spring 2003) 30.

Poem

Yelling Into the Mouth of a Cave

Hello
Sound
waiting to arrive
back around
down into the cracks
where the limestone
yawns great gulps
of ancient air underground
previously accustomed
to drops whispering
from mineral tongues
touching kissing
for a thousand years
in darkness crystalline
Sound
Echo

in Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review 33:3-4 (Spring/Summer 2006) 265.