Tag: AppalachianStories

Pitching and Staving

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Evan Gurney

from Folk Medical Lexicon of South Central Appalachia

The phrase that mountain folk
coined for this condition

provides its own lesson
in the semantics of vertigo,

its participial movement
staggering to and fro,

unmoored by prepositions,
the grammar gone dizzy too

as those twinned verbs spin
into gerundive nouns,

all meaning aptly erratic,
out of tune, each stave’s

horizontal bars failing to fix
in place its pitch, which drifts

off the scale like a ship
that has lost its horizon

among the many staves
in this timbered ocean

of hollow, ridge, and cove
that roll and reel and veer

until I look up, I sing out,
I pitch over, I’m staved in.

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Our Grandmother

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Kari Gunter-Seymour

twisted silver-streaked strands
into a knot, pinned at the tip of her crown,
draped her bird-bones in crossback aprons
cut from calico, sewn on a pump pedal Singer,
bought brand-new just after the war,

baked flaky scratch biscuits
from White Lily flour, spoonfuls
of lard, a pinch of salt and sass,
danced the flatfoot clog around
an old wringer washer,
employed on Mondays without fail,

wielded a scythe and hoe
good as any man, grew cabbages
big as watermelons,
drew us maps, where we came from,
patchworks of bloodroot, furled fierce
along the face of the Appalachians,

orphaned us, laid out
under a pine branch blanket,
a rough-chiseled stone.
Daffodils regretted their unfurling.
Redbuds wept purple pearls,
the fields so bare they grew voices.

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Vernal Equinox

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Kari Gunter-Seymour

Featured Art: Equinox by Eugene James McFarland

I’ve been thinking about last times
I never knew were the last—
grandma cooing me unconscious,
daddy whistling me home to supper,
my toddler’s toothless grin, tiny fingers
clenching wildflowers, the last time
I prayed, desperate for those departed,
how they flit ahead of us, flying.

Tonight the Big Dipper balances
on its handle. Tepid tree frogs peep
songs of resurrection. One morning soon,
I’ll eat a good breakfast, fill a water bottle,
pack a book, walk the fencerow into the holler,
rest beneath the eagles’ favored perch,
shake off this inexplicable sadness,
two cinderblocks where lungs ought to be,
let spring hold on to me for a while.

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Nights of Noise

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Rachel A. Hicks

Featured Image: Untitled by Tanner Pearson

“I don’t want to be cured of beautiful sounds,” insisted Milo.

            —The Phantom Tollbooth

Must I implore you for more of what I want?
A clanging of fine china, symphonies of wet
spoons, clattering of forks falling from the violent
sky, a click-clack-click of yellow teeth
saying not much of worth in the night.

If trash can be treasure then I can be sound.
I can be the scream rising like steam
from the red kettle sitting on your mother’s stove.

I am the thumping & cheering & crying
of every bum, junkie, bride & boy in town.

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Ms. Appalachia

.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Rachel A. Hicks

I’m an Appalachian beauty queen,
a capable kitten with smooth birthing hips.
Applaud the cinema kitty cat caught in the smoke ring.

I rule over Kentucky junkyards, zoom in as I sit on refrigerator thrones,
play pianos by the highway, cigarette-thin fingers give a tinkle tankle of a tune
perking ears that belong to someone twenty years ago.
The honeysuckle sweetness of my fingertips, syrupy sweet on the dirt keys,
greasing up the notes, F, E, B & so on.

Underneath the toasters & the books from all those rummage sales
sits some hot ghost of a memory. Smitten kitten, the smell of trash
makes me think of our place & the breeze outside is the same one
I feel at night when trains go by.

Stack the broken binds of hymnals for a stage, wrap, rip, some leaves, some dirt,
pack, perch, pack it all in, real tight, until the only clumps to fall
from my deciduous crown are intentional. A tap dance for you, a finale
with hula-hooping hubcaps & juggling light bulbs. I sing in a rusty tune,
decaying notes in the keys of D, C, G & so on.

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To Love Love the Beloved

.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Rachel A. Hicks

Featured Image: Pride by Ellery Pollard

When I die, no fly will buzz,
no bird will crow, no man
will cry. Or maybe when I die,
every man will cry

and say, “There goes the love
of my life—a beauty—if only
she had known.” Women
will hate me stealing

their men’s hearts even in death,
for taking over their dinner conversations
after they’ve carefully prepared
the pink-orange ham loaf.

Forks & spoons—the men will swear
to see my eyes—my teeth will show
up in all the fine china. My legs prance
through the women’s heads

as they look at the octopus waving
its arms, wrapping its tentacles
around another. Dirty salt water
will turn red with their fury

as their husbands say, “She was such a beauty.
If only she had had eight arms.” A constellation
will form in the shape of my face & planets with
my thumbprints will be discovered.

When I die, don’t send me roses
because I am now the dirt, I am the plant,
I am the seed that sits in the crook of your skull, always
reminding you what it’s like to call a place home.

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Marriage Prayer

.Reading time 1 minute.

By John Mark Ballenger

Featured Art: Science Instructing Industry by Kenyon Cox

Place into our mouths this day the coolness
of ice cubes from a heavy-bottomed glass, the burn
of bourbon on our barely parted lips,
                                                                  pursed
as if to receive a glowing Kentucky coal
that our grandfathers shoveled
in their youth into stoves 5 o’clock
each new morning before the barn chores.

Grant us strength to willingly undress,
to lie down naked and limp and freckled
and biopsy-scarred along the
                                                     shoulder blade
and hernia-scarred at the pubic line
and ashamed for what has been taken
and unashamed of what we have made.

And let her not fear my hand,
the stiffening knuckles or the clumsy
sandpaper ends of my fingers, as it rises
to touch her neck or cheek. And let me not
fear the look on her face
                                             as she turns away.

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Blessed Is He

.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Jeff Tigchelaar

Featured Art: Christ Blessing by Martin Schongauer

How am I?
Blessed. Blessed. I am
just blessed. God is good. Not afraid
to brag on God. Brag all day
on Big Man. My fiancée
just graduated. Junior college right across the street.
Four point O. See? God. He’s good. I’m looking
for work. The other day who do
I happen to meet
but the owner of Huntington Steel.
If that’s not God right there.
You can’t tell me that’s not a God Thing.
He’s workin’ it. Every day. Everywhere. I’m going
to Israel, by the way. Jerusalem. Judah. Judah, you know,
was Jacob’s fourth son. Now
Moses, though—God didn’t let just anybody
bury Moses. Dude was holy. An angel
had to put old Moses in the ground. Archangel Michael.
Jude 9. Look it up. Good Book.
Moses was so holy. Up there
two weeks with God on that mountain.
Gettin’ those Commandments. No Moses, no tablets.
Moses got blessed like nobody’s business.
Love me some Ten Commandments, though.
Love me some Shalt Nots and Covets. Don’t Covets.
God bless Moses. I’m just
blessed to be able to tell you about Moses. Share that
Word with you today. The man was like God’s Number Three.
Maybe Two. Right behind Jesus. Blessed as hell.
I’m about to be blessed with that steel job, though.
Think how hard Moses would work that. Mr. Bulrushes.
Mr. Burning Bush. Mr. Hold Up That Rod,
Throw Down That Staff . . . but now he’s dead and can’t
so I’m the man. Work my ass off get that good reward.

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Waitress in an All-Night Diner, West Virginia

.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Rebecca Baggett

Featured Art: A small portion of the Fanny Bennett Hemlock Grove on one side of Spruce Knob, West Virginia. Old Mammoth Road by Carol M. Highsmith

Angels visit sometimes, close to dawn.
They cluster by the door, seem to scan the cars
as they turn in, as if waiting for something—
what, she doesn’t have a clue.

She’s forty-three, a bad cough (first cigarette
at fourteen), two divorces, a dragonfly tattoo
on her left shoulder blade. Tumble
of chestnut curls—not a gray hair yet—
imprisoned in a net, magnificent when released.
Terrible feet. She hasn’t told a soul
about the angels, not even her sister,
who knows everything else worth telling.

They aren’t as glorious as she’d imagined.
Their wings, in particular—tight-folded
against their backs—surprise her by their drabness,
dusty-brown as the sparrows that hop around
the parking lot and gorge on stale biscuits
she crumbles on her break. The angels’ eyes—
washed-out blues and greens with strange,
cat-like pupil-slits—track her as she winds
through tables, a pot of coffee in each hand,
or delivers platters heaped with pancakes, sausages,
fries.
                       Why me? she wonders,
her back tickling under their eerie gaze,
but can’t imagine. Until the night the boy—
he can’t be more than boy yet—plunges
through the door, white as biscuit dough
except two spots, fever-red, high on either cheek.
The pistol he grips trembling with every
shuddering breath.

The cook’s whistling an old Alabama tune
she almost recognizes. The trucker
in the back booth drops his toast, lunges
to his feet. The pistol wavers toward him,
and then the angel by the door lifts its hand
to beckon her. She feels her lips curl
into the smile she offers worn-out mothers,
fractious teens, men who look as though
they can’t endure another night alone.
Yanks off the net. Shakes down her waterfall
of hair. Takes the first step
toward whatever’s come to her.

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A Discreet Charm

.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Stephen Dunn

Featured Art: Luncheon Still Life by John F. Francis

Our good friends are with us, Jack and Jen, 
old lefties with whom we now and then share
what we don’t call our wealth. We clink our
wine glasses, and I say, Let’s drink to privilege . . .

the privilege of evenings like this.
All our words have a radical past, and Jack
is famous for wanting the cog to fit the wheel,
and for the wheel to go straight

down some good-cause road. But he says
No, let’s drink to an evening as solemn
as Eugene Debs demanding fair wages—
his smile the bent arrow only the best men

can point at themselves. I serve the salad
Barbara has made with pine nuts, fennel,
and fine, stinky cheese. It’s too beautiful to eat,
Jen says, but means it only as a compliment.

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Feel Better

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Mary Ann Samyn

It was raining on the other mountain
like a preview of a movie I’d watch soon.
The clouds smudged, like mascara.
The wind grew very important. The day
had not yet been assigned a permanent value
and I meant to offer some resistance.

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The Effects of Laudanum

.Reading time 37 minutes.

By William Todd Seabrook

Featured Image: Blasted Tree by Jasper Francis Cropsey

name this particular spot after me. I don’t know where I was going with that. I have a tendency to lose track of things, as Mom used to say. I think it’s just impossible to focus and live in Laudanum at the same time. Laudanum’s the name of my town, not that you’ve ever heard of it since it is mostly just the one intersection of Chillicothe and Route 87 out in Ohio Amish country. No ones calls it Route 87, they call it Boulevoux Road, after some guy named Boulevoux, whom I never met. The rest of the town is Amish people and strip malls and the two rarely conflate. I stand next to the Marathon station and across from the Dairy Queen, 197 feet from where Boulevoux’s daughter died, and I am positioned so that when five-speeds come off a red light they down-shift as they pass me, as if I’m the catalyst for their propulsion instead of just a cow, or a guy in a cow suit with a high school diploma and a sign that reads Ranchero’s Restaurant in lazy letters.

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