High summer has arrived in the mountains and foothills of East Tennessee, and we embrace the heat, Dear Reader, with poems that refresh like a cold glass of your favorite beverage. We open with five new poems from the great Maurice Manning, Kentucky’s own, and one of Appalachia’s most celebrated poets, fresh off his first season of The Grinnin’ Possum podcast. KB Ballentine joins us from Signal Mountain, Tennessee, with a poem of longing well-suited for our “galaxy of heat,” and Alan May follows from Knoxville, Tennessee, with three poems of rivers, horses, empty fields, and searching language. We part ways this installment with four poems by Sharon Ackerman of Virginia that weave family and place into intricate poems of tenderness and belonging.
Jesse Graves, Appalachian Places Poetry Editor
Maurice Manning: 'Smite'; 'Down Here in the Jailhouse on My Knees'; 'Out of the Mire and Clay'; 'Two Altars'; 'A Bit in the Horse's Mouth'
Maurice Manning's eighth book of poetry, Snakedoctor, will be published in November. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and is co-host of The Grinnin’ Possum podcast. Manning lives with his family on a small farm in Kentucky and teaches at Transylvania University.
Smite
Civilizations can do a number
on themselves and hasten their demise.
I've been reading about these matters, Jack,
in the b-i-b-l-e. People
mislead their own people, and people
mislead themselves. Then things fall down--
down, down, as a judge's gavel--
like pillars and temples, threads of the fabric
begin to fray, and it all unravels.
And, in our time, will fall the steeples
we've builded up and set so steep.
That's when the blind start leading the blind
to find the nothing they will find,
eh, Jack? Believe I'll head for the hills
when spring is sprung with daffodils,
and perch up yonder to watch the fall
when all of that begins--the end of time,
or what have you. That's also in the book--
and, Jack, I've given it a look,
when God comes back to declare the mess
we've made for ourselves is one we've made
and the payment back is long delayed.
And the people no longer live as people,
or children of God. They live as if
they're only children of themselves
who believe in nothing and nothing else.
Down Here in the Jailhouse on My Knees
Well, Jack, they're feeding me on cornbread
and beans, as the old tune goes,
and that's the situation--spare
as cold water you know where.
Nobody saying nothing now--
comprende? Button up the buttons
and pretend a touch of nothing is nothing
or the long shadow cast by nothing
and my, we know the score on that.
But this is how the doo-dah works--
either a little light appears
to lead me out or I have to make
the light myself--with help from you--
I've got the broomstraw, you've got the coal,
you've got the steady glowing coal,
and soon enough the little light
flares up, the empty shadow fades,
and I can see which way to go.
But it ain't easy is it, Jack?
It's not like sitting on the porch
and ticking time in the rocking chair.
What's going on with us is stark,
our blind inching through the dark.
I'd say we both comprende that,
though you've gone deeper down than me.
Molasses for the cornbread, Jack,
would be a change from the usual fare,
but now that I'm parched and relieved--
believe I'll mosey down to the river
and take a gander at all that milk
and honey on the other side
they like to talk about, and see
if my tin cup runneth over.
Out of the Mire and Clay
So, what's your plea on silence, Jack?
I figure someone like you, who's known
to be a ponderer of things,
has given it a little thought,
and surely through the hoary years,
you've had a chance to try it out--
to sit back, saying nothing,
and let time tick its silent gears,
to see what's what, and then whatever
it is that needs to be settles
quietly into being itself,
as on a flower, unfolding petals
unfold to leave the final flower
just standing there in yellow power.
Eternal silence, Jack, just think--
it's like a distance hard to see,
and I like looking at distant hills,
because that great beyond out there
is like a church with nothing in it.
Cold comfort, ain't it, Jack?
So plain, no thrills or frills.
I've always found silence is slow,
and silence has delivered me,
it turns out, many times, so being
at peace with nothing going on,
apparently, gives time meaning,
and folks like us look out and watch
or wonder, Jack, trying a thought,
then letting it sit like a stick of wood
that might arrive in the stack of kindling.
A stick that goes into a stack--
I like the thought and sound of that,
a rhyme to level hopeful mood
with gloom, and bring them into ease.
Which brings me, Jack, to another question,
another one for you--what kind
of crackpot do you think invented trees?
Two Altars
We've got some activity, Jack, just over
the hill, and I'm pretty sure it's The Squire--
up to no good. He's burning something
that shouldn't at all be burned. A spindle
of smoke is turning into the sky,
leaving a lingering, yellowish haze
that shouldn't be there to sting my eyes.
But I can't be bothered with his ways--
he has a theme, he has a scheme,
which always is to plunder my scene,
and plundering that, he plunders me,
when all I'm trying to do, dear Jack,
is ready the garden for planting time
and mark which seeds require the moon,
and which require the season's signs
so worms and bees can join the tune
that turns the dead ground over and brings
from underneath, the living ground,
that calls deep roots to follow down
and wait. Revival is my thing,
and turning furrows makes me sing
with all the holy moonlight sounds.
I wake up humming in the bower
that has not one ungodly hour.
And though The Squire may burn his wretched fire,
a still small voice calls me to join the choir.
A Bit in the Horse's Mouth, Jack
I heard a preacher, Jack, whoop out
a big amen for a man who'd been
delivered from cigarettes, okay,
and that has always touched me, Jack,
because if you're going to bother to pray,
one way is to start on the smaller end
of things--no wisdom or kinder heart,
or help for the suffering masses, only
a nudge to stifle a snag on the path
of living a life with oomph and so forth.
But who knows what that looks like, Jack?
It's a comical dilemma, ain't it?
Hell yes, I've got religion, Jack,
and never not had it, in fact--
I was raised in the church-house doors
whenever they were open and we
were always there, often missing
my father. Lord, I've come to terms
with that, although it's still a bit
of a burr. Raised in a faith of fathers
and knowing he was missing, but out there,
a wanderer, a soul alone,
but in the end finding his way,
though having little to show for it,
curled up and stricken in his bed,
no declaration or salute--
he got where he got in the end and died.
And that informs my living, Jack,
a ghost to haunt and round my praise
or visit me on lonely days.
KB Ballentine: 'Ache of Wanting'
KB Ballentine’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, was released May 2021 with Iris Press. Her earlier books can be found with Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies including I Heard a Cardinal Sing (2022), The Strategic Poet (2021), and Pandemic Evolution (2021).
Ache of Wanting
The raven barks
his sentinel’s call
in this season between
seed and harvest.
A ragged echo
fraying the skies
over stalks withered,
soil cracked and shriveled.
No filaments of lightning,
no cloud whiskers the blue
gaping its empty throat.
Wind abandoned this place,
swallowed the wildness.
Now oak and cottonwood
brittle in a galaxy of heat,
even the stillness parched.
Crumbs of dust float,
coat all we see.
Etched in the branches,
the raven risks his wings –
shadow fading
then gone.
Alan May: 'THE WATAUGA LAKE AND THE DISPOSSESSED'; 'O, FOREFATHER'; 'WINTER MONSTER'
Alan May has published three books of poetry. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama. His poems have appeared in The Hollins Critic, The New York Quarterly, Plume, The New Orleans Review, Diagram, The Laurel Review, and others. He works as a librarian for Knox County Public Library, and he hosts a poetry podcast called The Beat.
THE WATAUGA LAKE AND THE DISPOSSESSED
I know the river runs away for fear of your vacant eyes I deny the dam and its locks the man walking the length of the barge against the current houses beneath the lake I can’t descend the stairs to your heart so I loiter in the backrooms of poolhalls the roof of the old Victorian like a raft free of the flooded house but it all sinks by daylight or rots in the mud and muck when run aground
O, FOREFATHER
not much / has changed / the horses chomp
at the oat / grass / the cowslips
pop up / by the river / the speed / at which
we travel / matters / little
people / are / walking / shoeless
through / the shards / of houses / in a valley
nearby / and / the muffled / noise of talk / talk / talk / the trees / are dying and some / are now / painted / with rubber the space / between / us grows / and tiny tyrants / are / everywhere they hide / in the cornflakes / for / instance I trust / no one / but / the horses / who play in the valley / near / your / homestead the horses / who chuff / and snort their hooves / tap the code / that I / scrawl on the red / barn / against / a red / horizon and / o yes / there are / vultures pecking / in the high weeds / near the lake I hear / you walked / a million / miles to meet / our / foremother
WINTER MONSTER
A lonely boy with a pellet gun shoots the sky Sky that looks like a bank of snow like the pale Eyes of a movie star an assassin A train grubber grubber of trains eyes Of a little girl holding her breath She's forgotten how to breathe what started out As defiance ends in terrorism we are Drifting into this eternal landscape The dead leaves murdering the dead grasses An empty field small house collapsing barn Frozen shirts and dresses hang on an invisible line
Sharon Ackerman: 'The Morning My Father is Buried'; 'All Our Histories'; 'The Field'; 'Heritage'
Sharon Ackerman resides near the Blue Ridge of central Virginia. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Southern Humanities Review, Meridian, Still: The Journal, Atlanta Review, Cumberland River Review and various others. She is the winner of the Hippocrates Poetry in Medicine international poetry prize, London 2019. Her poetry collection Revised Light was published in 2021. She is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine.
The Morning My Father is Buried
It is early November
a first breath of frost tarps
the grave white as a bible
slicking the incline where six
men stagger to keep purchase
on our family plot, coffin
sealed and shouldered.
They are so careful of you,
of leaves that want to play
with our mourning, unseat it
to a tumble. I know how small
my faith is next to this mountain,
have seen waters gushing
down it, how its blaze rares up
in autumn, spits when a drop
of rain hits it, acres of red-gold
fed by the flint of the dead.
It isn’t death’s wound, but the snap
of steel that locks you in
a hymn sung in metal notes
sunk in the ore of women’s voices.
I see you banging a spoon
on Sunday morning to wake us up.
If I lean in, my shadow leans
in toward you as you fall.
It’s that other world we must believe
in, where lowered to a native
land, rivers can shout, praise come.
All Our Histories
There is a picture of my grandma
at seventeen, skin like sweet milk
her eyes so very wise
full of canning and floods, every
kind of venom a mountain can muster.
Looking at her is a kind of loneliness,
like the miles between towns
or the overhang view of a valley
where you can see how a river runs
but it’s too far off to swim.
There was a husband she loved
who died young, done in by coal mines
or a bad heart, twin stories
flowing side by side. Another man
who may have been bad--- or not,
who she may have married,
or not. And in time, ten children
jumping the banks, wet filaments
spreading north. But this is the girl
before, who cannot disclose
what she doesn’t know yet.
Old stories will come from high up
and later, from many directions
so they can’t be told apart---
Like the haying wagon and thunder
they rumble through us and are gone.
The Field
It’s sweet how goldenrod waits
at the end of summer
milkweed unscrolling its husks,
tithing seeds. In just a few weeks
nettle will snap in umber
tones underfoot, a low flame light
the field where flights of doe turn
themselves loose at sunset,
bodies near as they pass,
yet muted. They don’t understand
even now, their own distances,
old love, the ache of it.
Heritage
You don’t know what you’re made of to start
so many things run in the blood
a looseness of limb
quiet from a long line of quiet.
The brine of a river in the hair
means born, one name flowing
into another, inked cursive
in a bible that says come or be summoned.
I’m baptized because my daddy
believed in the brown leaf
smell of water, loading his child’s pockets
with the living and the dead,
until the streams bore that weight.
Wade out on silt and it begins to exhale
below your feet. I felt it once--
my mouth flooded by something lighter than love.