We’re kicking off our Poetry on the Porch series on Tuesday, April 10th with a MIKE drop: our former poetry editor Michael Chitwood and longtime contributor Michael McFee. Both Mikes will read from new works, including Chitwood’s Search & Rescue (LSU Press, 2018) and McFee’s Appointed Rounds (Mercer University Press, 2018). In advance, we’re sharing a few selected poems previously published in Southern Cultures.
by Michael McFee
Vol. 15, No. 4: The Edible South
Meat grease, flour and water, stirred till smooth—
it’s what my forebears ate, if they were lucky.
It’s what my mother ate, those hard dark years
she worked at a sawmill way out in the mountains,
learning to live on cigarettes and coffee
and cold biscuits raised from the dead by gravy.
Now and then she’d cook a little for us,
something to moisten and darken and quicken
the bowls of bland white rice or mashed potatoes
I’d shape into a cratered volcano
whose steaming lava overflow improved
everything it touched on my dinner plate.
Good gravy’s not an afterthought, a dressing,
a murky cloud masking a dish’s dull prospect:
whether poured from a Thanksgiving china boat
or a black iron skillet in Bloody Madison,
it’s the meal’s essence, where flesh meets spirit,
where fat becomes faith, where juice conveys grace
as red-eye, giblet, sausage, faithful sawmill—
whenever I think of those savory names
and the times I’ve poured or ladled or spooned
then mixed and dipped and sopped up their elixer,
not wanting to waste a single filling drop,
my mouth starts making its own thin gravy again.
where fat becomes faith, where juice conveys grace
by Michael Chitwood
appeared in Vol. 23, No. 2: Summer 2017
Uncles worked pocket knives
to rake the grease of work
from beneath their nails,
but yours, in the Sunday mirror
and quick at my throat,
were always clean.
Over, under, down through.
“The print or stripe should match the blue.”
Sundays only
Granddad wore one.
Saturdays only
you did not.
Over, under, down through.
“You can judge a man by the shine on his shoes.”
Granddad’s hung
on the back of the bedroom door,
knotted all week.Before services,
he’d cinch it and grin,
proud his boy felt this pinch
every working day.
My back against your chest,
you talked me into the knot,
over, under, down through.
Then you’d snug it
just short of choking
and call me “Mr. Chitwood,”
the name you dressed in
every morning to leave the house.
Over, under, down through.
“You can judge a man by the shine on his shoes.”
by Michael McFee
Vol. 19, No. 1: Global Music
Plunking the rusty washtub bass
was simple, tautening or relaxing its rope
so that a few thumping notes
rose or fell at the floor of a bluegrass tune.
And it wasn’t that hard to squeeze
some buzzing chords from the budget guitar
when the rehearsers took a break
to step outside the basement for some cokes.
But cousin Marc was the only one
stubborn and patient enough to teach himself
to play, fiercely as Scruggs, the banjo:
he’d stand perfectly still, head tilted forward,
watching his big pale hands flashing
as if they weren’t part of his body anymore,
the right one with slipped-on picks
speedily crawling among the twanging strings
stretched over the full-moon belly,
the left one racing along sharp steel wires
up and down that skinny neck
until his finger pads started bleeding again,
fresh calluses splitting as he played
“Foggy Mountain Breakdown” one more time,
my cousin only wincing slightly as
the music scarred and healed his flying touch.
until his finger pads started bleeding again, fresh calluses splitting as he played
From That Was Oasis, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012.
by Michael Chitwood
appeared in Vol. 23, No. 2: Summer 2017
Cartridge of thought,
stick of screech
in our unlearned pinch.
Arithmetic’s cigarette,
the answers vanishing
in the giggles at our backs.
Mistakes rub off
white on our fingers.
This dusty little bone
shows our ignorance
as we tap
a meaningless code
on the powdered tray.
Hands are being raised.
But here is praise,
the soft applause
of the erasers
as we beat the answers
out of them.
Pythagoras, Cortés,
blue of the earthworm’s gut,
red-letter dates,
all drift from us
and our standing ovation
to another chance,
a new day’s clean slate.
Michael Chitwood work has appeared in Threepenny Review, The Atlantic, New Republic, Poetry, Field, and numerous other journals. His most recent book is Search & Rescue (LSU Press, 2018). Chitwood teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and long served as the poetry editor of Southern Cultures.
Michael McFee has taught in the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1990. He is the author of eleven books of poetry, most recently Appointed Rounds (Mercer University Press, 2018), which contains two essays first published in Southern Cultures (“My Inner Hillbilly” and “Just As I Am Not”).
