Welcome friends and fellow travelers to a full serving at the Poets’ Table, Samhain Edition. Here in Johnson City, Tennessee, we have sailed through such a wave of picture-perfect October and November days that one could almost lose sight of the tragedy our region, and much of the southern United States, has endured in recent weeks. Hurricane Helene has left such devastation in its wake that fully taking stock of the damage, and of our new environmental reality, feels both overwhelming and probably impossible to comprehend so soon. Perhaps we can take some needed respite and recuperation from the good words of our poets. I know they inspired me this time around. We open this installment with a suite of five new poems of family history and reckoning from one of Appalachia’s most celebrated and beloved poets, Pauletta Hansel. East Tennessee’s own Sylvia Woods offers a range of reflections about laundry, children, tomatoes, including one in the elegant form of the pantoum. We offer a poem about an all-too-familiar road hazard of living in Appalachia from Diana Day of Georgia. Originally from Saltville, Virginia, Matt Prater sends us a pair of dreamlike meditations on commerce and philosophies of life in modern America and beyond. We take our leave this fall with a haunting set of poems about lost places and eventual forgiveness by West Virginia native James Long, one of which sets us in the spirit of the season with a concept from Stephen King, spookiest of them all.
– Jesse Graves, Appalachian Places poetry editor
Pauletta Hansel: 'Understory'; 'An Incomplete List of Threatened Species Found in and Around the Clinch River and Not Much of Any Place Else'; 'Letter to My 2nd Great Grandmother'; 'The Tracks'; 'Standing Below the Copper Creek Trestle, Scott County, Virginia'
Pauletta Hansel’s 10 poetry collections include Will There Also Be Singing? (Shadelandhouse Modern Press, 2024), poems of witness and protest; Heartbreak Tree (Madville Publications, 2022), which won the Poetry Society of Virginia’s 2023 North American Book Award; and Palindrome (Dos Madres Press, 2017) winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award in Poetry. The past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and a previous guest poetry editor of Now & Then, Pauletta’s writing has been featured in Still: The Journal, Oxford American, Rattle, Appalachian Review, and Appalachian Journal, among others.
Understory
Imagine you could crack open
past’s brittle bark, burrow
back into its storied rings
in search of some lost chosen
moment, a place in time
which is not place, not now
or then, but spiral. I have planted
all my faith in words we use
for all we cannot see. Believed
the naming carved my claim
upon this world, a whorled
notch my hand will find again.
Go deeper. Beneath the rise
and topple, spring-slick mud,
heat-bound crust of clay
there is the endless weave
of story under story,
here and then and now.
(After Ada Limon’s “Sanctuary”)
An Incomplete List of Threatened Species Found in and Around the Clinch River and Not Much of Any Place Else
Overlooked Cave Beetle, Appalachian Monkeyface,
Mountain Madtom, Yellowfin Madtom, Spectaclecase.
Birdwing Pearlymussel, Littlewing Pearlymussel,
Cracking Pearlymussel, Shiny Pigtoe, Pheasantshell.
Gilt Darter, Heelsplitter, Rough Rabbitsfoot,
Hellbender, Purple Bean, Snuffbox, Slender Chub.
Letter to My 2nd Great Grandmother
(Evaline Qualls Rhoton, 1860–1918)
Dear Evaline,
called Ebby,
called mother,
called grandmother
by mine. Your name a blurred
photograph, a gravestone
I touch. Show me
the dress you wore, coarse cloth
you spun, the sweat-slick mule
who pulled the plow, and you
behind him scattering seeds.
And now you are a seed
between my words
and I am
Yours,
The Tracks
(Sarah Margaret Rhoton Mullins, 1879-1925 m. Tramroad Jake Mullins, 1873-1945)
I. My 1st Great Grandfather Speaks His Philosophy of Life
Show me a mountain
I’ll blast my way through
Show me a tunnel
I’ll pound in the tracks
What use is a mountain
her dark core unclaimed
What use a girl
unbroken
II. My 1st Great Grandmother Speaks of Her Marriage to Tramroad Jake
Daddy said he was a boomer,
not much better than a gandy dancer,
digging out the road for tracks then
rolling out his pallet in that dusty camp
along beside whatever kind of men.
But who else was there to court beneath
the maple’s flame that weren’t my kin.
And he wore his brim of felt
upon his head as if it was a crown.
Daddy said he wouldn’t linger with me
once that road had tracks laid through the belly
of Clinch Mountain. Daddy didn’t know
by then he’d lay down tracks inside of me.
I was 14, and surely old enough
to know what burrows in a girl
and plants itself will rise to seek the light.
Even wed, he weren’t one to tarry in a place.
Me and our boy, that year we trailed behind him
job to job. And so it was, another year, another
young’un born, another weaned and clinging
to my skirts. No time to stop and lean
against the maple’s furrowed trunk
and picture how it might have been
for me if Daddy had been right.
Standing Below the Copper Creek Trestle, Scott County, Virginia
(Etta Mullins Lewis, 1908-1993)
Today I plant my feet
below the faint footprints
you left a century ago.
You left this place
a reed-thin girl, a burr clung
to your mother’s feedsack dress
all the way across the trestle
high above the muddy Clinch.
The girl you might become
here giving way to make
the you I barely knew—
Dear Grandmother,
today the trees swirl yellow
leaves onto the path
your memory has made.
Your memory a trace—
thin seed flung to ground,
grown brittle brown among
these jagged stones that lead me
down along the Clinch’s banks.
Who might have you become
here? Is it too late
to know you now in me?
Sylvia Woods: 'Double Creek Pantoum'; 'My Mother's Pride'; 'Growing Tomatoes';
Sylvia Woods taught high school English for many years. She is a native of Eastern Kentucky where her family has lived for 200 years. Her work has appeared in anthologies and literary journals. Her first full-length collection of poems, What We Take With Us, was published in 2021. In her spare time Sylvia enjoys teaching seniors in the local extended learning program.
Double Creek Pantoum
Sometimes I'd like to live in Double Creek, miles from a highway
where dogwood blossoms sway over the creek in April's breeze,
the very creek where Mommy and her siblings skipped and played.
They splashed and chased minnows beneath the trees.
Where dogwood blossoms sway over the creek in April's breeze.
The sound of their laughter trilled like birds in the sky
as the children splashed and chased minnows beneath the trees
their cares and troubles washed clean over sand and rocks.
The sounds of their laughter trilled like birds in trees.
Wearing home-made clothes, they stomped their feet
as their cares and troubles washed clean over sand and rocks.
They had reason to fear none but deadly rattlesnakes.
Wearing home-made clothes, they stomped their feet
in the waters where my ancestors played.
Worried what slithered down from the hills and caves,
they had reason to fear none but deadly rattlesnakes.
In the waters where my ancestors played
they marveled at the shape of each small pebble, feared
what slithered down from the hills and caves.
Sometimes I wish I lived on Double Creek.
My Mother’s Pride
I hardly give washing clothes a thought,
sort and turn the knob to start.
Lighted screens tell me its rinsing or spinning.
In my childhood, laundry days began
before daylight, the wringer washer
shaking the porch floor in rhythm.
My mother took pride in her laundry skills.
our washing line a tenth mile from pole to pole.
Sheets and towels rose on the hillsides
like sails in a sea harbor.
Boy’s jeans and girl’s dresses,
My father’s Sunday shirts—bleached and starched
arced like bubble wrap between the pins.
A little bluing to the sulfur water,
turned our towels and sheets white.
My mother's tiny hands chapped
red and raw from winter's cold.
Still she scrubbed grease stains from daddy's
work clothes and dipped them in Faultless.
When denim coveralls dried, she ironed
them stiff enough to stand.
She’d shake her head when we passed
a neighbor's house where once white underclothes
flapped their gray disgrace, my mother's pride on her face.
Growing Tomatoes
(or Raising Children)
Nightshades need an early start.
In early spring they crave light,
rich soil, humus aerated
with compost, dark and earthy.
Until final frost falls, set sprouts
on the patio to harden.
Too many spindly plants in one row
render all weak, leggy.
Let roots spread wide and deep, ready
for summer drought or heat.
When stalks grow thick and sturdy,
stake and tie vines with care. Wait
for heavy fruit to hang from branches.
Remember even heirlooms
can die on the vine, shrivel
for want of water or rot
from fanatical caretakers.
Keep bugs and weeds from
the garden. Feed and tend. Pray.
Diana Day: 'Appalachian Mountain Fog'
Diana Day has written poems all her life, but she became an advertising copywriter to make a living. She now lives in the Appalachian Mountains near Neel Gap on the Appalachian Trail. She enjoys hanging out with other poets and fiction writers and likes to go hiking and trout fishing with her husband of 46 years.
Appalachian Mountain Fog
In the city in the fog,
you see what you
need to see. A bright
stop light stains the
grey air red like
watercolor dropped
from a brush.
Tail lights blink
with the pace of the
traffic: stop, go,
stop, go.
In the mountains,
the traffic is thinner
and the fog is thicker,
the roads far curvier.
Imagination takes
the wheel and you
hope it knows where
you’re going.
It’s hard to tell
when fog shrouds
the crosses that
mark the places where
drivers left the roads.
Their spirits haunt the
tighter turns that, one
way or another, will
take you home.
Matt Prater: 'Responsibilities for Mongeese'; 'Municipal'
Matt Prater is a writer from Saltville, Virginia. His poems have recently appeared in The Missouri Review (online), Hawaii Pacific Review, and Poetry South, among other journals.
Responsibilities for Mongeese
(After Ashbery)
Perhaps one is walking through the 6th Arrondisment,
when, after listening, through an open window, to a small repeated
snatch of a recipe appropriate for faux crystal glasses, one is
unsettled by the children of German tourists, swinging their legs
over wrought iron café chairs and watching Yu-Gi-Oh!
on handheld devices, almost loudly.
One pivots from one’s own half-projection—
something which is running from America as fast as Hemingway—
but now we are almost running into something like logic.
Quickly we conspired to forget all talk of motherboards,
or anything else about that small production facility near Tacoma.
‘There is something, you know, about the kind of son who learns,
in a long, quiet childhood, to feign appreciation for subjects,’ and yes,
indeed, I thought of that, though nothing like what was mentioned.
The longing for what cannot be interpreted never dissipates.
Even when one is driving through the smallest valleys—imagine
boutique wineries along the French Broad, then the lazy jokes.
Although I have been told, the business of America being business,
that attempts have been underway for even longer than a decade.
‘Languidly,’ he wished to write, for someone who would understand
that he could have almost gotten into the Sorbonne if he had worked for it,
and would have certainly been entertained if he had had the right uncle.
Municipal
In this country where
the country has become
a car lot, the cities are, slowly
(slowly) re-building walkways.
Every afternoon, the city parks
are full of idealists burning
their driver’s licenses;
and by twilight, the curbs
are lined by pragmatists,
driving timeshare taxi cabs
to pick up the idealists,
who are on their way
to hold discussions about
third spaces and just zoning
hosted in the basements
of former fellowship halls
which, on other weekday nights,
become jazz clubs, rehab centers,
garden clubs, and meditation circles.
Every night, one discussion or another
rolls on in some small former church,
while church services roll on
in large former box stores.
The idealists consider schooling.
The taxi drivers taxi themselves
between night school and services.
The idealists consider the children.
The drivers drive their children home.
The idealists imagine life beyond taxis.
The drivers imagine life beyond taxis, too.
In each one’s dreams, they see hangers
of flowers and full displays of bread
and a charming playground
and a place with bicycles
and children on bicycles
and a short walk between
bespoke cobblestone walkways
and a pasture where deer pass through.
What the idealists are describing
is nothing like the country they
pretend not to come from;
what the pragmatists say is that
this dream is our country, too.
James Long: 'MY FRIEND JIM FRYSON GETS THE SHINE'; 'ABANDONED HOUSE'; 'FORGIVING BUB BROTHERTON'; 'A LATE GOODBYE JUST OUTSIDE TOWN'
James Long’s poems have appeared in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, and Kestrel, and are forthcoming in Pirene’s Fountain, Good River Review, and I-70 Review. A two-time winner of the West Virginia Writer’s Inc. Annual Writing Contest, Long has attended the Appalachian Writers Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School, and he recently completed an MFA in poetry at Spalding University. Long lives, works and writes in Charleston, West Virginia.
MY FRIEND JIM FRYSON GETS THE SHINE
(shine – in Stephen King’s universe, the ability to see things that have happened in the past or may happen in the future)
I believe he faced a fissure, the beckoning
dimensional crack that sucks time
travelers in, or through which the marble-eyed
insane are singed with their first visions
of God. It happened when he winced
and ducked his head a little as I drove us
under the Kyger Power Plant’s metal transport
overpass, that private bridge topping Ohio 7’s
two lanes, laid for carting coal from storage
to the great fuming towers. My first job,
reporting the decidedly uncinematic news
for his hometown paper, stories so banal
they must have still been welcome twenty-five
years after the horror story of fractured metal
which plunged the Silver Bridge and forty-six
local lives in the river. I’d never lived away from home.
He didn’t say why his shoulders instinctively
rose as if they were protecting his neck from the feared,
falling beams. And I was a stranger imagining
the half-bridge’s ripped frame, the headlights
of spilled cars pointing moonward.
In the newsroom’s secret shrine, they kept
the tragedy’s black-printed pages plus, no joke,
the bridge’s model-train-sized replica intact,
pre-collapse. We’d driven along his shore,
opposite mine, where he’d fed me deer chili
and we drank Pabst in a bar in Pomeroy, the Ohio
River, close as his sleeve. I don’t know who in his family
might have drowned in it, but something was reaching
for him, by God, I felt its fingers brush my cheek.
ABANDONED HOUSE
I swear if I were paratrooping
I’d find it again, time
my jump and glide to that glade in the topo map’s
unnamed lobes. We hiked there
in the hippie days,
to the weathered clapboard, the pond, all of it
glistening right out of Xanadu.
Mom wore a sun dress
and Dad a straw hat with his Lennon specs.
My virgin, shoulder length hair looked like it
had never been cut.
So little I knew
to fear, the unknown, what may never happen,
water moccasins on the bank where I stroked cattails.
They explored inside—
and I can guess
the smell of rotting mattresses was tolerable
for my dad because he wasn’t drafted to Vietnam,
that he was anxious
to smell anything else.
I think of the parlor, the China no one cared to steal,
how Mom lifted a teacup with her pinky extended
as if she was well-healed,
how the family that lived
there is gone, in a loss we’ll never know.
I’d like to rescue my childhood
from where I buried it in the apple grove.
FORGIVING BUB BROTHERTON
No affection admitted in the empty lot, this wreckage
which beckoned young boys, where the dandelions,
wild barley and cheatgrass grew unrestricted, and if you bent
to pick at the dirt you could always find a shard
of some brown bottle. Bub towered over me like a terrible god,
too big for his age and stinking of gasoline, his greasy mane
tied up in a dew-rag, twisting my new bike’s handlebars
until the brake-line snapped. Such force. Such a moment
of declaration, the enmity between us sealed. His celebrations,
rowdying Selbyville’s hollers in that black Chevelle which sounded
like it would gobble us up. Not until I was wearing collared
shirts every day, cultivating my career did I picture his home,
where the urge to break things was crafted, the car on blocks
in his yard with rusted doors open like flaunted wings,
the weeping there when the oak tree withstood his swerve.
And when I heard he crashed at the bottom of Holly Grove Road,
next to Ben’s Run, I knew exactly the spot. I thought about
the baby mustache softening his face, the imbalance of cruelty
in the world, the many times I’ve cried for fairness in my life.
A LATE GOODBYE JUST OUTSIDE TOWN
I rarely saw my grandma
after the stroke broke her language,
but still she chuckled occasionally
when I’d visit, shaking her head
and making her gray curls bounce a little
like they did that long-ago day
we got caught in the rain and ran from it
through the empty parking lot,
where the carnival roared each year.
I imagine that bolt from the blue
got us headed home from the fabric store
or maybe the bank, I don’t remember.
In her last years, I’d let my hand
graze the back of her blouse
as she lifted her walker foot by foot
up and down the corridors,
sit on the porch swing and bend
my knees a little to make it sway,
just enough. Our view was a pasture,
strangely one ridge and valley south
from the very farm where she was born.
I always thought it a shame
she didn’t make it back all the way,
and couldn’t the world have been arranged
differently, so the facility overlooked
the apple orchard of her youth.
When I got word her consciousness
was huffing out like the billows
from a steam engine and maybe
I’d get to say goodbye if I raced
two hours to get there in a snowstorm,
I pushed and slid my Honda for ninety-
one miles up I-79, the urgency
I couldn’t fight letting go at a rest stop
just outside town. Though we can’t know
the moment, and though I didn’t
turn off the car, let alone wash my hands,
it’s likely she died while I braced there
staring at the painted cinder blocks
above the urinal. Then a five-minute drive
past our city park and up the short rise
to Serenity. The stiff uniformity
of clouds was just loosening,
light shining through their partings,
with no apparent design.
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