Appalachian Bed Rot by Emerson Crabtree

 

Journal Entry #444

Today, I didn’t leave my bed at all. I just lay there, scrolling another app on my phone in the dark. I was hoping to find something that would amuse or upset me enough to jolt my body with some energy. I didn’t care what exactly I saw as long as it made me feel awake.

Eventually, I stumbled upon the page of some woman I’ve never met. I think she goes to my papaw’s church or something. I’m not sure, but what caught my attention was this string of bad poems she kept posting.

One read,

im worthy.

im worthy of love and acceptance.

im worthy of forgiveness.

im worthy of time.

I am worthy, even if Earl Rays

with that tramp from the food stamp office.

 

It had 50 comments, mostly an argument between her and Earl. I couldn’t understand much of what either of them wrote because it was so littered with misspellings. However, from what I gathered, Earl Ray claimed he was at the mechanic for his pick-up truck. She said it was a lie because his dad was a mechanic who taught him how to do his own work from a young age.

Some of his comments were completely indecipherable, like,

“i aint got blinker fluid at the treler i had to go on t a shop for t n u can see the receets when i git home” and her response of “u aint comin hom u go to that 20yrold tramp shes on food stamps to feed 2 kids from 3 dadis”

Blinker fluid? Three… daddies? For two babies? Did she have two men sire two children, then have a third raise them? I furrowed my brow and scrolled to the other poems.

One read,

 

To the peple in my comments:

Worry bout ur lives,

dont worry bout mine.

Worry bout urs

while u still have time.

1 day ur kids will grow on up

and they wont have nothin

2 do with u because u

were too busy on my page

and will probably end up on drugs

2 cope with u

not spendin time with them

(like someones kid did – u kno who)

 

No comments, surprisingly. Her audience was a small town, so most of her audience should have known who she insulted. Perhaps if I hadn’t let my sloth chain me to my mattress, I’d have been able to hear this dog whistle, too.

One read,

 

To my kids school,

i know i ain’t been on the

approved pick-up list since my

last DUI,

but im there mother

and Earl Ray

is there daddy

so he should be able

to put me on the list.

An to my probation officer,

pls add me back

so I can tag u

and u can tell em

I been sober for 15 days now.

 

Finding that poem after the previous one was comedic timing I could never pull off in my work.

What kind of cognitive dissonance made her accuse someone else of neglecting their children to feed their addiction to her chaos? How did she assume herself to be a good mother at its epicenter? How is she accusing anyone of destructive parenting when she can’t even be trusted to pick her kids up from school? I scoffed at myself; why was I defending the honor of a target I didn’t know?

One read,

 

i made mistakes in life.

i cheated.

i lied.

i skipped a prayer or 2.

But at least im not like

Carla Jean.

She stole my meemaw’s

broccoli casserole recipe &

took it to the potluck

sayin it was hers.

Carla Jean is a recipe stealin bitch.

 

After scrolling through several poems, I got into the rhythm of howling with laughter and mocking them aloud, even though I had no one around to hear me. Reading her poems felt like watching a bowl of alphabet soup learn human emotion for the first time from trashy cable talk shows. The “poems” were just personal rants about the drama in her life with unnecessary spacing and elementary construction—more like parodies of poems. There was no rhythm. Her words were nothing like a song; it just sounded like mindless chatter that’s completely irrelevant to the mass human experience.

I imagined a publisher tossing her poems in the bin and struggling to sound as professional as possible in his rejection letter. I imagined a man in a designer suit with his face reddening as he concealed his laughter. When he’d try to “let her down gently,” he’d deliver his platitudes with a tone that made them sound like his personal inside jokes. Then, I imagined her reading the rejection letter with comedic cluelessness. She’d read aloud with wide, empty eyes and nasally whines like a ditzy housewife from a 50s sitcom re-run. Perhaps she’d even churn out even worse poetry to push onto more publishers. Maybe one would take her work out of pity. If she did manage to release her scrawlings through an actual publisher, she’d have to shield herself against literary critics slashing her with vigorously choreographed insults. As I scrolled further and further, I soaked up this imaginary situation like my own version of television as I blended my limbs with the sheets.

Suddenly, I heard my inner voice jab at me, “At least she’s more of an accomplished writer than you.”

I tried waiting until the stray thought went away, but the more it lingered, the more I realized it was right.

At least her writing existed somewhere other than a dusty hard drive buried under belongings that haven’t been touched since college. Publishing her work might have been like releasing a rabid coyote into a trailer park, but at least it’s living, not sitting in a tomb made by depression.

At least her writing can make someone feel something, even if she’s never thought about what emotion she wanted to invoke from all who saw it before she hit “post.”

At least she’s sending out signs of life so the world knows she’s alive. More than that, she’s leaving a permanent trail behind, etched in our new cave walls to be preserved long after she dies. If nothing else, she has a voice that was heard. Someone will remember her because she published something.

At least there’s a way to know she’s there. How many people know I’m here?

Maybe laughing at her craft so callously was a mistake, but at least I’m not a recipe-stealing bitch like Carla Jean.

 

Emerson Crabtree is an up-and-coming writer from Southern Kentucky. He holds a BA in English from Morehead State University. His poetry has appeared in MSU’s literary journal Inscape.

 

**Featured image credit: Ahmed Nishaath – Unsplash, cropped and altered