hands down to me.
Her pockets fill my vision and run over.
Slips of paper scribbled
with old-fashioned names
like Vangeline
and Isolene
and Iva
and Lovel.
Horehound candy and sticky peppermints,
white tufts of tissue paper
and the crinkly, plastic wrapper
protecting a plug of King B.
Her face is blurry
in my young memory
but her kitchen is as clear
as the strange shadows
on faded linoleum.
Shadows I liked to watch dance
as I slid across the room
dragging my butt over bumps
and sinkholes settled
into the floor
of an old house in Soldier.
Uncle Charlie Loves You
I remember tired, washed-out women
warning us young’uns
with his name—
“Uncle Charlie’s gonna come,
gonna come all the way
out here
just to get you.”
I remember we believed it.
I remember the good ol’ boys
rounding up a posse
fueled by boredom
and Pabst Blue Ribbon
every damn time
he went up for parole.
He might get out,
he might come home.
No-Name Maddox,
backwoods bastard,
progeny of a prostitute
with no paved streets to walk.
He could’ve been one of them,
with a Mamaw on Mauk Ridge.
Might’ve been another nobody
puffed up on Kentucky windage,
bedding high school girls
in the bed of a beat-up
pickup truck
saying,
“I don’t know
what somebody is.”
Or maybe
Uncle Charlie
could’ve been a country preacher.
A powerful, primitive Baptist
running the church house like a family.
A short feller filled
plumb up to the brim
with rural route righteousness,
briar-hopping the pulpit
instead of hitching to Haight-Ashbury.
The Holy Spirit in his wild eyes
instead of homicide.
I know
I hear Kentucky in his voice.
Hiding in the space
at the ends of words
where consonants drop off
and disappear.
Jump Rope Jitters
I’m still falling down.
Like when I was in fourth grade
and the worst in class at jumping rope.
I can still feel my little kid skin connect
with playground concrete
and see the bright red ribbons of blood
cutting a path to the cuff
of my ruffled pastel socks.
I can still feel loose gravel trapped
right below the surface.
Bits of rock worked their way out
and left rough skin behind.
I can hear the skim and skip
and my heart speeds up to keep up.
The matching scars on my knees itch
as I lie awake at night.
I know there’s no recess to dread tomorrow
and I should be drifting gently
toward a soft sleep, but my legs jerk
and my belly bubbles up with bad nerves
and somehow I’m still falling down.
Crying Mad
