Many thanks to Appalachia Bare for offering to publish the poem “Little Margaret.” It’s about an old friend, the late James Elton “Jim” McMillan, Jr. While I was attending Emerson College in Boston in 1969-70, I lived in a house in Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, with Jim and his wifeContinue Reading
Fatback frying in an old well-seasoned cast iron skillet soup beans bubbling Silver Queen corn with a plate of sliced tomatoes and onions on Mrs. Vashon’s table where we sit for hours as she tells stories of the past. Red Spruce trees swaying in the soft wind whispering secrets toContinue Reading
Beneath yellow buckeyes and silver bells, we dip our feet in the cool rushing rapids as the Little Pigeon River’s clear flow bathes the large rocks that seem to tumble like fallen giants from the Chimney Tops. Around us are the cucumber magnolias, adopted into the diverse overstory of theContinue Reading
Danita Dodson’s new book of poetry is called The Medicine Woods. If you recall, our Associate Editor, Edward Francisco reviewed her last book, Trailing the Azimuth. Her poems speak so easily to my heart, so I wanted to write the review for her new collection. In The Medicine Woods, herContinue Reading
His breath is bad: cigarettes and agitated solitude. He stands outside his car excavating shrapnel from his hand, vestiges of a lawnmower blade sharpened cruelly, sparks taking revenge as metal glazed in splinters. The VA doctor, to whom he resents going, says he is lucky the constant picking has notContinue Reading
Halfway up the mountain, just below the broken down garage where the tractor and the rusted truck were kept, in an interior dominated by grease, dust, patina and ageless imprint of mountain people generations removed from the old country, a young boy would sit in thunderstorms brought by Norse gods,Continue Reading
I spy my love along the ridge, a silhouette in shadows of black. I stand with my heart a breakin’ ‘fore I fear he’s not coming back. We were to be married this autumn but the war broke out in June. With brothers at odds in the fighting, I fearContinue Reading
**On a mobile device, this poem is best viewed using landscape orientation. As a child raised right on the buckle of the bible belt, each June I could be found buried in the basement of a church singing Jesus loves me, and stringing salvation bracelets. One strand of leather, 6Continue Reading
I long to lie in the thick apple moss, hemmed in by doghobble, leafy liverwort at my feet, lichen like a lacy pillow under my head, covered by a canopy of sugar maple and red buckeye, butterfly ghosts of beech leaves fluttering above. If I were very, very quiet, wouldContinue Reading
I cannot watch war movies. In my mind’s eye, I interpose my father trudging through rice paddies in Vietnam, trudging through tall grass so thick, it slices the skin. I see his small frame – just a boy – whose uniform in later years fit his 13-year-old grandson. I seeContinue Reading