Gravy
by Michael McFee“. . . where fat becomes faith, where juice conveys grace . . .” Meat grease, flour and water, stirred till smooth—it’s what my forebears ate, if they were lucky.
Subjects: Poetry
“Photograph, 1983” and “Sandbagging”
by Rachel Richardson“The warden says fill and you fill it.” Photograph, 1983for Lola Bell When you and my grandmother both got old,and she could not bearthe empty house, and all your childrenwere gone as well, some nights the two of you crawled into her brass bed“like a pair of old spinsters,” your sistersays.
So Then
by Murray B. Shugars“So, you get up and pilfer a cigarette from your lover’s pack, smoke it in blue moonlight pushing through the bare kitchen window. Someone is listening.” So, you lie awake beside a lover of many years,and the tabby cat kneads the blanket.You have only three days’ leave.
Poetry
Women Dancing with Babies on their Hips
by Cathy Smith Bowers“. . .coupling on the dance floor, two women, alone, dancing with babies on their hips, wearing in and through, stitching up the random piece-goods of the night.” We had travelled to that old coast,six hours to New Bern, the long ferryfrom Cedar Island to Ocracoke and thento Roanoke where Manteo, for loveof the glittering »
Getting There
by Peter Makuck“After two pricey tickets for speeding on Highways 17 and 43, their endless billboards screaming like previews of a coronary, I had to slow down.” After two pricey tickets for speeding on Highways 17 and 43, their endless billboards screaming like previews of a coronary, I had to slow down.
Home of the Double-Headed Eagle: The Visionary Vernacular Architecture of Reverend H.D. Dennis and Margaret Dennis
by Ali Colleen Neff“In the deep peripheral ravines settled by the descendants of local sharecroppers, The Home of the Double-Headed Eagle shoots up from a long row of kudzu-covered shotgun shacks and cracked pavement to entangle passerby.” The Gibraltar of the Confederacy erupts gloriously from the southern tip-edge of the flat Delta flood plain to guard the lush »
Smoke ‘n’ Guns: A Preface to a Poem about Marginal Souths, and then the Poem
by Conor O'Callaghan“Addressing a jubilant crowd in Belfast, shortly after the declaration of the original ceasefire in 1993, Gerry Adams reminded his audience that ‘they haven’t gone away, you know’. He meant that even as ‘the cause’ was dwindling, its upholders—’the boys’—were still among us. He might just as easily have been talking about the Klan.” You »
“Big Bone Lick,” “Big Talk,” and “Flush”
by Robert Morgan“. . . for ten millennia, the bones seemed wreckage from a mighty dream . . .” Big Bone LickAt Big Bone Lick the first explorersfound skeletons of elephants they said,found ribs of wooly mammoths, tusks.They dug out teeth the size of bricksand skulls of giant bison, beavers.
Poem with a Refrain from Charley Patton
by Travis Smith“. . . and now the guitar’s high note sings what he can’t sing it—” You hear him sing itwhen you come to strikethe matchand you catch a noseful of sulfurand the kindling starts to burn—
Stores
by William Harmon“. . . there’s Humphrey pumping drugs all out & sundae soda cracker pop . . .” general merchandise the old testament.wares notions sundries dry goods ready to wear candy hats cash & carry HarryTruman making change thanks.
Bourbon
by R.T. Smith“. . . Earl was a steady liar who never in his life solved a single crime, to hear my father tell it, an improvident soul prone to nocturnal misdemeanors himself . . .” My father was hooked on one brand, Ancient Age,always in pints perhaps to stow snug in the glove boxwith the pearl-handled »
Chocolate Pie
by Michael Chitwoodboth sweet and bitter, like that afternoon The woman who made ithadn’t been to churchin years, except for thereat the crimped dough edgesand beaten-egg cumulusof the browned meringue,and beneath it, the pudding,both sweet and bitter,like that afternoon,so long ago,just the two of us,talking a little, eating.