Old Logging Road May 6, 2008

OLD LOGGING ROAD

 

 

Leaving behind lawyers and you,

I go home.

 

An old logging road sidles

around the mountain

behind our desolate house.

I trudge through mud to the top

and eye the rapescape

of amputated limbs,

knotty torsos,

exposed hearts — ringed to count the years.

 

Here scars are deep gashes

in abandoned land.

Poison ivy and wild vines

fill empty spaces.

 

Stumbling, I reach out to steady myself

and clutch a blackberry switch.

Thorns pierce my palm,

draw red beads to the surface.

 

Cursing,

I rub blood across my barren belly

and weep for this wasteland.

 

 

 

 

 

“Old Logging Road.” Bluestone Review (Spring 2008).

Where I’m From April 27, 2008

WHERE I’M FROM

For George Ella Lyon

 

 

I am from porch swings,

Hershey bars and bottles of pop.

 

From a house of many angles,

high ceilings and slanted floors.

 

Outhouse lilies, dishwater dahlias,

wanton weeds and gaudy flowers.

 

I am from greasy suppers and sugar diabetes,

Bryans and Rambos: Romeo and Faye.

 

From big eaters and bad tempers,

so pitch a hissy when nothing fits.

 

I’ll give you something to cry about!

and Don’t play with fire or you’ll pee in the bed!

 

I am from Episcopals and Free Wills,

Presbyterians and Pentecostals,

dinner on the ground and preachers who spit.

 

From Damascus and St. Paul,

Kentucky-born and Virginia-raised.

 

The fireplace where my uncle fell –

scars stretch tight now across his back –

and another uncle child who died

years before I was born.

 

I am from hoarded photos,

shoved in a drawer,

wrinkled young faces

folded against time.

 

 

 

“Where I’m From.”  The Bluestone Review (Spring 2007).

Wise County Man April 1, 2008

WISE COUNTY MAN  

Sleep in Sunday sunshine

and calico shadows.

 

Tomorrow you’ll

bear down on bitter asphalt

and haul another load.

 

Have your fun Friday:

rumble in parking lots, bars, and back roads,

but come home to me.

 

Wash away the black fuzz

of diesel and dust,

and we’ll fumble in this dimwitted light

’til our tarnished love sparkles in the dark.

 

Twine yourself around me:

we are tight as the laces of a steel-toed boot.

   “Wise County Man.”  The Bluestone Review (Spring 2007).