“I saw God, my son once told me. He lives in a field of snow. What could you see? Just snow. And footprints.” “Aspiration”Chattanooga, Tennessee Farther south they call it hog jowl. Up north they call it salt pork. But we called it streaked meat—
“What was your last name, where did you live?” Between AssassinationsOld court. Old chain net hanging in frayed links from the rim,the metal backboard dented, darker where the ballfor over thirty years has kissed it, the blacktop buckling,the white lines nearly worn away. Old common groundwhere none of the black men warming up before the »
“. . .there’s now the death of Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt.” When Dale Earnhardt dies, I’m standing in Uncle Doc’s kitchen, listening to the men put across the woe of the penalty of NASCAR.
“I said, ‘Couldn’t we go a little slower?’ And he said, ‘With a white man sitting in this front seat with me? You won’t catch me going less than ninety miles an hour. Mister, you’ll just have to take it. I’m saving your life.’” By any measure Robert Penn Warren is one of America’s most »
“There’s no horizon, / no line on the Atlantic. . .” Bartram’s Trail To follow Bartram’s trail upstream, past Tugaloo, to cross the Chattooga River at Earl’s Ford, to go up the Warwoman Valley, up past the cascades & bridalveils of Finney Creek, up along the Continental Divide between Rabun Bald & Hickory Knob, is »
“Only later would I learn / about the great-winged vultures the long-gone pharaohs deified. . .” Shooting the Breeze Aloof and aloft, the buzzards circled the farm,and we would shoot at them, to no effect,small guns popping, round after round.Did we know better?
“For each and every one of us, a rainbow is the prize.” Civil Rights was brewing in a Charlotte coffee shop,At an orange juice bar called Tanner’sdown near the main bus stop.Cross of Trade & Tyron where the Cherokee once hunt,Harry Golden cast his shining eye on a way to make his point.
“Someone, sometime / must have made biscuits. . .” It’s a birthday party for an old friend,mentor and I’m staying overnightin an impartial place, decoratedin pinks and gray, bed, sofa,bath, closet of a kitchen.
Poetry
1In fits and starts, Lord, our words workthe other side of language where you lie if you can be said to lie. Mercy uponthe priest who calls on you to nurture and to terrorize him, for you oblige.Mercy upon you, breath’s engine returning what is to what is. Outside, light swarmsand particularizes the snow; tree limbs crack with ice and »
“I wish they’d get tired of tuning and play.” They seem to think they have something to say,those locusts high in your circle of pines.I wish they’d get tired of tuning and play.
“Among the grass tufts / Along a fence: cattle bones. . .” Near Bluffton Mill1 The old house ruinsShine with dust; late day coolnessFrom the pine forest
“My people rolled over twice in a Pontiac one dark night, but survived. . .” Who are your people, she asked, when she heard that I too am from Arkansas. Who are my people?