Sweep
...reclaim. Because I don't get home much anymore, I notice the smallest scintilla of change, every burnt-out trailer and newly paved road, and the larger, slower change that is exponential,...
Accidents Happen with Clockwork Regularity
...clouds. And then you are in your kitchen, cutting onions at the counter as tears roll from your burning eyes, waiting for the nightly news while the chicken thaws in...
Jarvis Branch, North Carolina
Chris Carter’s home being moved out of the right-of-way of I-26, Jarvis Branch, NC, 1996. Photo courtesy of Rob Amberg. Chris Carter’s house being moved to new location off of...
Mars Hill, North Carolina
New Waffle House NC 213 in Mars Hill, Mars Hill, NC, 2004. Photo courtesy of Rob Amberg. Signage on NC 213 in Mars Hill, Mars Hill NC, 2004. Photo courtesy...
Margaret Walker's "Micah" (1970)
...they shall not be remembered in the Book of Life. Micah was a man. Published in Prophet's for a New Day Published: 11 March 2008 © 2008 Southern Spaces...
At Sun Ra's Grave
...hung in a bronze policeman's grip. Dew rises through the halflight, a gauze, departing wings. * One drifts in the neon glow of the church's sign, News wrapped tight around...
Brass Knuckles
Something so pleasing in their heft it's easy to forget how my grandfather used them in those days when everybody knew he kept a hundred rolled and rubberbanded in the...
The Dirt Eaters
Southern Tradition of Eating Dirt Shows Signs of Waning —headline, The New York Times, 2/14/84 tra dition wanes I read from North ern South: D.C. Never ate dirt but I...
Self-Portrait at a Bend in the Road
...stand where the newsmen stood, over that place where the Riders waited in a circle of grace and disbelief, fragile as the surface of a ladle that hears each word....
Like Father
...feel his heartbeat And he cannot hear mine — There is too much flesh between us, Two men in love. Published in Please (Kalamazoo, Michigan: New Issues Poetry & Prose,...