Poet of the Week Archive: January, 2006

January 3 - 8, 2006: Richard Chess

Quite a few years ago, Rick Chess came to read at Western Carolina University on the North Carolina Writers' Network reading series. I had never heard of him before; all I knew was that he was located in Charlotte at the time and had published poems in various magazines. How to describe the connection that the ear makes with a voice that resonates with the rhythm of one's own? At that reading I felt that Rick and I were on the same poetic wavelength. Perhaps it had something to do with my grounding in the Old Testament rhythms and voices that lived in Rick's poems. Maybe we shared across our different cultures and religions some deep poetic current that defied classification. Who knows? All I can vouch for is that a resoundingly Jewish man and a resoundingly Southern Protestant woman connected as poets that night, and I have remained an admirer of Rick's work ever since. An inspiring teacher (I've heard as much from some of my own students who sat in his workshops) and a generous friend, he brings to poetry the spirit of both the contemporary and the ageless. Who better, then, to ring in 2006 than a poet whose voice bridges the old and the new with courage, humor, and hope? Salud!
-- Kathryn Stripling Byer


Let's Face It

I want to write a steep poem
that will break you
through to new strength and
speed, a course
that timid runners would avoid,
but my poems stroll around a lake
on Sunday afternoon, nudging
a home dog into dark water to retrieve
its nature.

I want your poem, this poem, to rhyme,
but at every off-ramp (the end of every line)
waits McDonald's, and, since you taught me to despise
fast food, I've been training my appetite
to be repulsed by beef-soaked fries
made famous by McDonald's and to favor
subtle aromas that draw one miles
from the interstate in search of local culinary surprise.

I want your poem to be born
into a perfect quatrain: one father, one mother,
one sister, one immortal fish, one bedroom
through which to gaze upon one moon a month.

I want your world to stand
on traditional legs -- study, char-
ity, acts of loving kindness -- but every

world, every poem since Adam is
broken, wandering
from tent to tent -- three nights
here, four there -- shlepping
its pack of grief.

Today, a Thursday
in February, the 6,570th day
I have no poem for you.
And here you are
in room 307, seated
before a poster of the bard
obscured by the visiting poet,
your step-father.
Let's face it: I can't write anything equal
to your virtues.
I'll have to honor you
on your birthday
the way the dead have always honored the living:
by remaining silent.

Third Temple

When they build it, I will bring Leon, unblemished
chocolate lab, as my offering to the Lord.

Leon comes when I call, when I call upon him
in truth, with a bone in my voice. He bounds
up the steep bank in front of the house and races
to the rear where I stand at the kitchen door.
With his two brown eyes, he looks at me adoringly.
I command him to sit, and he sits
and receives his reward. I command him to lie
and he lies and rolls over to offer his belly.
This is how I know he will dutifully accompany me,
when the time comes, when the dust of disassembling
the Dome of the Rock has settled and been swept away,
when the thousands of elegant tiles that adorned the building
have been wrapped and shipped to collectors,
when the Muslims have slunk away for the last time, disgraced, ashamed,
when the righteous stonemasons have completed their work
on the new pillars and columns and steps, and the metalworkers
have finished the seven-branched candelabrum and the yeshiva
boys have placed it and the lavers and display table and cherubim
and curtains, when law has been established in its third home.

My brothers and sisters will bring their pets.
You bring yours: Cat. Parakeet. Angelfish.
Alpaca, diamondback, and pig.
Goats aplenty. Turtle, mare, and sheep.
From their cages, perches, fields, bowls and pens,
they have gazed upon us for years. Watched us
knot our ties, weep on the sofa, stare blankly at snow.
Have they known, all along, that we are lost?

The red heifer has appeared!
From this day forward, I will read to Leon
from Leviticus so that he will understand, when we arrive
in Jerusalem, the meaning.
I will grill meat every day,
greeting first light with lamb and throwing
ribs and sirloins onto the grill well into the night,
thickening the air with smoke
so that he will grow accustomed to the aroma
which will be magnified, when the Temple goes on-line again,
by a power of tens of thousands of peace and sin offerings.
Leon is my only pet.
On my state-employee's wages, I cannot afford to care for more.

On the plaza below the Temple, under
the achingly blue sky, the sun spreading its glory,
among wigged, frocked, pale, and fearful ones
meticulously performing every great and minor ritual,
I will shake with shame because Leon is all I have,
the Lord deserves more than his extended paw.
Surely, the priests will marvel at his fine coat
just before they slit,
and because we are a good, kind, loving people
surely they will sing his favorite psalm
as blood drains from him, as his coat flames.

Traveler's Prayer

May it be
Your will, our ancestor-

who packed silver
in sacks
slung over camels' backs

who steamed
steerage
and who was sickened
by sea and who dropped
anchor and was greeted, on the moon
of a new night, by gunfire

who roasted lamb in the belly
of a metal bird in the sky

and who traveled, stiff, nauseous
by train to camp
and to far Nebraska

Guide us-
a tired immigrant
family wandering
starched twins gazing
a retiree flying
on wings of Italian shoes
a mother turning on exhaustion's
lathe-

-In peace
sustain and lead us
to our destinations-
home or far

from home
to experimental
treatment, to conference or
ranch, coral, snow

Bless the work of steering
and may the pilot's voice
be calm
the toll-taker's hand

clean
the officer's countenance
comforting

-And save us from zealots,
bacteria, torture, every disaster
on the way

May we find love
at the drive-through
window and front desk
on line for the roller
coaster
on the battlefield
in brothers' homes

In Your sight and in the sight of all
offering prayer at this moment
in the aisle or window seat
or entering a tunnel-speeding or
still

However it comes
hear our supplication
for You listen

-And in health and joy
return us
to the blackberries
our own wild
property
to our own
pillow

Kaddish
after Charles Reznikoff
27 Iyar 5763
29 May 2003

Upon Israel and
upon the rabbis and upon
the disciples and upon all
the disciples of the disciples and
upon all who study Torah in this place
and in every place, to them
and to you
peace;

upon Israel and upon all
who meet men and women
wired to explode
and who sit with professors
ministers, sheikhs, and
the pious multitude in mosque
and chapel and at plenary sessions and
breakout meetings where
delegates from nations gather
to denounce, and on the street
among those who proclaim
Zionist = Nazi Zionism = Apartheid --
upon all who are proselytized or scorned
whose lives are interrupted
on a bus, in a pizzeria
during a sermon or a kiddush luncheon
or in the middle of an in-flight movie --
to them and to you
here in this land of boutiques
and a food bank, mountains
and a river, crosses and a ring of fire
and in every place
on earth and beyond
safety;

upon Israel and upon all who live
in a boardroom, on a conference
call, on the apron
of a pool and on poetry --
you descendants of
tenement and cotton mill
today dispersing your wealth like pollen
to seed a maternity wing
and to mature in the form
of a black man entering college
and a documentary
on Vilna
in this place and in every place
your influence is feared and celebrated
to you and to those
yet to achieve power
humility;

upon Israel
and upon their children and upon all the children
of their children, those who disappear
among good people of this earth
and those who thrive
in this place where the Sabbath
table is properly set
and in every place
to them and to you
life.

Richard Chess is Professor of Literature and Language at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He directs UNC-A's creative writing program as well as its Center for Jewish Studies. He has published two books of poetry, Tekiah andChair in the Desert. His poem "Kaddish, after Charles Reznikoff," is included in the anthology Best American Spiritual Writing 2005.

Later this academic year, he will be the featured artist of the month on the website for IMAGE: A Journal of Arts and Religion, and "Kaddish" will appear there, as well. The other poems presented here appeared in the following journals: "Lets Face It" (Tampa Review); "Third Temple" (The Forward); "Traveler's Prayer (Prairie Schooner).

These and "Kaddish" will be collected in Mr. Chess's book, tentatively titled Seventy Faces, due in fall 2006 or spring 2007 from the University of Tampa Press.

Mr. Chess was also featured in our Garland of Holiday Poems last month. Click here for the archive of the December 26 Poem of the Day

January 9 - 15, 2006: Anjail Rashida Ahmad

Luminous is the first word I think of when I think of my friend Anjail Rashida Ahmad. And I have heard many other people here in Greensboro say that something happens to you when you are in Anjail's presence. It's as if her inner light fills up the space around you. And with that light there is also a comforting warmth. It is not surprising, then, that light and fire are metaphors that often show up in her award-winning poetry.

Not long after Dr. Ahmad arrived in Greensboro to be the director of the Creative Writing Program at North Carolina A&T State University, she came to visit me in my office at the Central Library to talk about how we could collaborate to promote poetry throughout the city. When she first sat down, folded up her cane and began to talk, I was immediately filled with awe and with several unspoken questions: You are blind, but you read and write poetry. How? And how do you teach classes and grade papers? How do you navigate this new city? But those questions were quickly overshadowed by the excitement that I felt about collaborating with her as a fellow evangelist for poetry.

And then, that night, I spent an hour or two reading her first book, necessary kindling, published by LSU Press. Filled with images and stories of family, with musical lines and engaging metaphors, necessary kindling is unforgettable. Publishers Weekly called it "a dignified, searing homage to African American women, and the speaker's family specifically."

Anjail's poems have appeared in numerous publications including Midlands, African American Review, Black Scholar and Ark/Angel Review. She has received the College Language Association's Margaret Walker Alexander Award and the Janet Preston Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

The collaboration and the friendship that was born in my office two years ago have both blossomed. She has conducted numerous readings and workshops in branch libraries throughout the city. She was the catalyst who led NC A&T to be the primary sponsor of our Poetry-Greensboro festival last year and she continues to inspire me to find new ways to promote the love of poetry in this city. This past April I could not have been happier when I stood on the stage of the Carolina Theater in front of more than 1,000 people and heard Anjail Ahmad read her poem "in late august before sputnik orbits its great metallic eye over the earth." And then she said, "And now it is my pleasure to introduce former U. S. poet laureate Rita Dove." It was quite a night for poetry in Greensboro.

Invite Anjail to your town to read. And enjoy her luminous spirit.

Steve Sumerford is assistant director of the Greensboro Public Library, where among other things he organizes the annual April literary celebration,
Poetry GSO.

in late august before sputnik orbits its great metallic eye over the earth
Cincinnati, Ohio, 1957

this saturday evening shimmers
her skirts just outside
the living-room window
for the brown-skinned dancers
shimmying and strutting around the floor,
heads tossed back, eyes closed against the light
while their tongues say ah-h.
done with serving the white folk, the men don
smooth cotton shirts with bright
tie tacks and silken handkerchiefs
taunting the lips of their suit pockets,
a bourbon, jigged with ice, in one hand,
the other: slippered
inside a trouser pocket for the sake of style.
like the men, the women's heads
glisten with a pomade shine
while their full-bottomed skirts
and off-the-shoulder blouses
would make them the talk of the town
if they could make their promenade on main street.
but in these two basement rooms,
transformed for the night
into a momentary paradise,
it's a strange moon that bows
as bill doggett plays
his funky honky tonk
for this round of swaying bodies
saying yes sir and no ma'am
only to themselves, wanting
the night to last a little longer,
forestalling sunday's bus ride
to the carlsons' or the wilseys',
where they must glide in through back doors
on invisible feet and with heads
bowed, slightly, when saying
yes sir and yes ma'am
while their eyes are saying no.

a piece of pie

a young woman and her father sit at the kitchen table;
the surface is grey formica dotted with yellow flowers
curling toward the center. their hands, hers a lighter mirror of his,
cling in silence around the forks lifting
this momentary delight to their mouths.

she eats the yellow filling, even the meringue that delights him,
a gesture to confirm their likeness, a possible kinship
beyond the mere taking of his word or her mother's-
a balm against the long years dipped in shame and disgust
at the mention of his name
or of hers which lacked his.

it is not quite summer
though the sun blinks its brightness over them.
his skin is chestnut to her creamy hue.
this arrangement, like the baby in the next room,
is new for them-
they only having begun the dance of kinship,
two years previous,
on the steel-blue leather of his front car seat.

that morning, he stopped and waited for her
before her deft pride, used to fend-off teenaged boys
ensconced behind the wheels of cars bruised and dented,
their barreling engines bristling
against the muscled brake, held firm and hard,
could refuse him
and make him too go away, empty-handed.

it was his car sliding into the bus stop
and idling that she was unaccustomed to ignoring
even though the strain of school books threatened,
like most mornings,
to tilt her toward breaking down and riding.

this spring day, full of chill and the grey scruff of billow,
brought the usual: the whine of a passenger window churning down,
the humors of leather, male cologne
and male insistence that waited
for her to break, to swivel her proud head back toward the car.

it was her last year in high school;
she had, at last, triumphed over the hungry years:
the spar city of food, the lack of light
and heat some winters.

she had outlasted the hand-me-downs
in whose folds s she floated-a unmoored boat-
no more tiptoeing around the flap of undone leather
or the wash of cardboard, thin shield against slick, cold-glint of pavement.

at last, she had even weathered the storms of wayward boys and nasty old men.
indeed, she had out lasted them and their intentions to use her,
to grind her down before tossing her aside.

until this moment, she had hated him too,
his absence, and the unfulfilled promise
that she made up and held close to battle the unanswered question: why
that had threatened for so long to undo her.

sonny
for Danny

when the sun caught him there,
amid the steel girders and concrete,
he was a little surprised at how thin the air was
and at how far back the hills
receded from the water's edge.

it could have been a sunday, the way he was dressed
with those fine gators shined and laced
like he really had somewhere to go.

6,2" and paunched,
he still liked his cuffs to fall just so around his feet,
breaking away to the back,
accentuating his bowed legs.

as the sun inched higher,
his doubled breasted flapping against the pinstriped vest,
his shirt collar relaxed in the tie's noose,

he felt the morning air sink into his belly
circling around the emptiness
that had hastened him from his detroit hustle,

the dime bags, the double dealing in dope, the bullet nestled close to his
spine
and all the money that came and went,
that could never take away the slack look in his eyes
each time he gazed back in the mirror
more haggard than the day before.

the muddy waters of the ohio river gushed and churned
against itself like the blades of swift knives
while the undercurrent tore away from him,
toward something certain, yet illusive...

in the light shadow quickly vanishing,
he pulled out his wallet
pausing only moments to fondle its fading warmth
before placing it gingerly against the bridge's brick abutment..

This was the most certainty he had known
since big mama died.
he had tried to get help when she failed to wake up

the morning before his fifteenth birthday:
No heat, no lights or phone
on which to place the call for help.

if he had not stayed out the night before,
had gotten her prescription, her heart medicine like she asked,
he could have kept her here, maybe forever.

she who kept him, raised him
would give her last for him, her brown-eyed darlin', first born grandson,
when his own mama deserted him
for that no 'count, red-boned nigga.'.

even in these cincinnati hills,
after the clean break toward normalcy,
a nine to five, the flat line of nothingness warmed over,
he could not shake the guilt.

So, when the sunlight splashed hard against the sharp angle of his jaw,
he leapt into the bosom of the air,
falling like that time when his life began
in the triple darkness of his mother's womb.

so imagine him now,
dazed and startled.
the tubes and gauze, his wrists restrained against the hospital bed.
a black-faced man swaddled in white while
slowly cutting his eyes back onto the world
that would not let him go.

Anjail Rashida Ahmad lives in Greensboro and is a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing program at North Carolina A&T State University. She holds a Ph.D. in African American Literature with a specialization in 20th Century American Poetry and Women's Literature from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an M.A. in 20th Century Poetry from New York University. Her first collection of poems, necessary kindling, was published by Louisiana State University Press in 2001 and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, judged by Dorian Laux. (The first poem reproduced here is drawn from that book.) Her chapbook, the color of memory, was published by Clear Vision Press, in 1997. Her work has appeared in publications such as Ikon, The Washington Square Review, The Missourian Weekend Magazine, Midlands, The Black Scholar, All that Jazz, The Greensboro News and Record and The African American Review.

Ms. Ahmad is currently the North Carolina Poetry Society Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the Central Region, and she has received numerous other awards and honors including The College Language Association Margaret Walker Alexander award for Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Janef Preston Prize for Poetry, the Robert Frost Prize, the Agnes Scott Writer's Festival Award for Poetry and the Southern Literary Prize for Poetry as well as awards for academic excellence. She conducts readings and writing workshops at public libraries and at colleges and universities around the country.

January 16 - 22, 2006: Sebastian Matthews

Sebastian Matthew's words claim place, whether wrapped in the notes of a blue jay or on a walk halfway through a late afternoon ramble with his dog. His keen voice is at home in the Blue Ridge Mountains or in loud cityscapes -- a voice informed by the heart and grounded in a wisdom seasoned with wit. His work carries us all deeper toward our own unknown, where we find ourselves not more alone but more alive with the undeniable rhythms of life: wind, waves, traffic, and the heart beating, a layered tapestry of music that Sebastian has culled from the fabric of everyday living. -- Glenis Redmond

Glenis Redmond is an award-winning performance poet, praise poet, teacher, and writer. For the past twelve years, she has traveled both domestically and abroad, performing and teaching. Her poetry won the Carrie McCray literary award and she is also a two-time recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Glenis has been published in numerous literary journals and publications including Stanford University's Black Arts Ouarterly, Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review, Emrys Journal, Bum Rush The Page: Def Poetry Jam, and African Voices.

Ancestor

Bears have been following me around again.
I saw one the other day, across the road,

snuffling about in his Nature Center pen
up from the polluted river and in sight

of the public golf course. And just tonight
I caught this snippet of National Geographic

on television: a hunter describing how he shot
this young bear; he was crouching somewhere

in the field, face turned from the camera
as he told his story. The man spoke forthrightly

of seeing it coming, of knowing the bear
hadn't spotted him, of making a decision:

if the bear walked into his area, he'd shoot;
if he drifted off, he'd let him go his way.

He came into my view, he said, and so
raised the gun. Then the bear turned to look

at me and I shot him. The hunter went on,
his speech slowing, faltering. With distinct sadness

the hunter described the bullet entering the bear,
exploding inside the animal. It wasn't remorse

he choked on: he had done what he had set out
to do. No, I am sure it was recognition I saw

clouding his face. He went down quick, he said.
He didn't know what hit him.

Easter Sunday in the Catawba View Missionary Baptist Church,
Old Fort, North Carolina

Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. -- Mark 16:12

The pastor turns to the end of Mark,
the Old Testament's long withheld promise

of resurrection, and sets his glasses
high up on his now sweating face,

Jaron leaning out of his 12-year-old huddle
to whisper, "Here comes the long part."

He's been highlighting the service, entry
by entry, with a yellow marker, a prisoner

marking time. I am a guest here, awkward
in my Sunday best, unpressed, my pagan

green tucked neatly away. Outside, morning
fog rests lightly on the front steps,

a silent knock on the door. The semis pour
down the mountain in a stink of rubbed brakes.

We've had three songs from the choir,
small for this small church, a block

of half-hearted testifying; only Miss Fanny,
the congregation's elder, able to stir

the place with the witness of her faith.
Even that I suspect is not new -- not like

fresh rain after months of draught.
I've put five dollars (borrowed)

into the basket. The place is close
to full: young families trundling in,

their children an excited murmur.
A little boy's been waving to me half

an hour, smiling back at the surprise
of my white face. The pastor has already

taken Jaron aside to tease him
for being twelve and looking pretty

in newly done-up cornrows; the old women
already pressed their leathery dry palms

into mine, fulfilling a church duty
as old as the rituals we've been enacting

with more or less enthusiasm.
Which is exactly what the pastor's been

getting at, his streetwise I-Have-Been-
Redeemed persona honed to a routine,

when he reads Mark: how first Mary
Magdalene then two disciples report

encountering Jesus, alive and well
and back from the dead zone, only to be

rebuked by mourners unable to rise
out of grief to witness a miracle.

They're church folk, he says, pausing
for effect. Just like us. He goes on

about the moral urgency pulsing
at the heart of belief (out from under

her hat, Miss Fanny pairing each call
with a responding A-men), dipping in

and out of song, half testimony,
half James Brown. Church-folk,

the pastor shouts, throwing the words
together like dice, like you and me,

ringing the "e" in "me" as a bell
at the back of his voice. Do YOU believe?

The congregation musters a lackluster
A-men. Jaron looks over, his face blank,

weighted by years he has yet to grow into.
Do you?! The two young souls, left alone

with the palpable vision, startled,
fingers laced, follow the bird's path

into the cloud-jammed sky. Did rain
dump down as they raced home, made

vivid in the rush of thunder? Were they
rife with the ache of coming alive

in rebirth? I've stopped listening
to the pastor, have followed Jaron's

daydreams as they skip out the side-door
of desire. Have joined him in the branches

of the giant oak, gone down to the river,
am throwing hooky stones at the fish

propelling their shadows
deep into the future.

Round the Bend

Not all veils obscure.

Just this morning
at a familiar bend
in the road to Warren Wilson
fog fills in the valley
like milk in a bowl, only
the topmost gable
of the barn visible. We are
stunned by the abundant nothingness:
brought abruptly into ourselves
then boomeranged
back into the day
through spectator eyes.

I drop you off.
Ursula lays in a contented
heap in the backseat.
Something good on the deck.
And when I pass the farm
again, at the turn,
this time emerging
from out of a tunnel of fog,
I cast a glance over
my shoulder. Milk in a bowl?
What was I thinking?
A fierce dragon
festooned in rivers of ashen silk
roars up through the light,
consuming the barn
as flame feeds on heat.

Then again,
at the top of the hill,
about to turn onto Old Farm School,
a bed sheet luffs

in the rearview mirror.
And for a moment
I watch it float
in the sun,
a muted music
of undulation

and then I round the bend.

Sebastian Matthews is the author of the memoir, In My Father's Footsteps, and co-editor, with Stanley Plumly, ofSearch Party: Collected Poems of William Matthews. Matthews teaches part-time at Warren Wilson College and editsRivendell, a place-based literary journal. His poems have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, New England Review, Poetry Daily, Seneca Review, Tin House and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. Matthews received a grant this year from the North Carolina Arts Council for a one-month residency at Vermont Studio Center. His first chapbook of poems, Coming to Flood, recently came out from Hollyridge Press and his book of poems, We Generous, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. "Ancestor" originally appeared in the journal Solo and "Round the Bend" in Seneca Review. "Easter Sunday. . ." is forthcoming in the online journal Nantahala Review.

January 23-29, 2006: Irene Honeycutt

I've known Irene Honeycutt in many roles, first as teacher at Central Piedmont Community College and in Continuing Education at Queens University. In her classes, I found a fine writing teacher, a friend, and a mentor. Reading Irene's poems and her books of poetry, I began to know her as a poet. Then I came to know her as the superb director of Central Piedmont Community College's annual Spring Literary Festival. Volumes could be written about what she has contributed to the people of Charlotte and to the writing community of this region and others, who have come to love this international celebration of the arts each spring. But it is the poet I want to address in this introduction, which I'm honored to write.

The titles of the poetry collections give the reader a lovely hint of what awaits when he or she opens one of Irene Honeycutt's books. It Comes as a Dark Surprise and Waiting for the Trout to Speak are indicators of the mystery, the patience, and the depths of longing and loss mingled with joy that make up the intricate patterns of her poetry.

Using fairy tales, city scenes, family, friends, travel, and the wonders of nature to wound, comfort, and surprise, this poet weaves magical and beautiful webs edged with danger. The elegies and laments in these tender poems are moving to the reader but the writing is never heavy. Instead the poems are quite subtle, so delicate you feel they might shatter like thin crystal if they weren't so finely crafted. The glass of these poems is strong and clear, "...an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world" as Stanley Kunitz said when speaking of what he wished for in his own poems.

Irene Honeycutt has achieved luminous reflections again and again by plumbing the wells of memory and closely examining the small details of our natural surroundings. Step into her poems and open yourself to the fragile beauty of her world. -- Diana Pinckney

Diana Pinckney has published poetry and prose in such journals and magazines as Southern Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Tar River Poetry, Calyx, and Creative Loafing. Her chapbook, Fishing With Tall Women, won North Carolina's Persephone Press Book Award and South Carolina's Kinlock Rivers Memorial Chapbook Contest. Nightshade Press in Troy, Maine, published her second collection, White Linen. Main Street Rag Press published her third book, Alchemy, in 2004. She teaches poetry workshops around the state, gives readings in both Carolinas, and teaches poetry writing in the Continuing Education department at Queens University, in Charlotte.

At Least for Now

The trousers
I bought for him

At Goodwill
Will work

At least for now
I can picture them

Freshly washed
Neatly creased

In the closet
Where I hung them

The others
Left on his bed

For him to donate
Or to save

Should he regain
The weight after chemo

At least for now
Some things are left

To him
My brother

Who wears it all
With grace

Adobe Night in Taos

Listen!
The gods are walking across gravel.
The adobe house,
windows pressed like ears to the darkness,
waits.
Then
moonlight blue on the curtains,
silence
so
deep
the thick clay walls begin to drone.
My skin tingles with wings.

How Can I Stoop to Wash My Face in the Surprise?
                              for my brother--an unsent pantoum

Today I imagine the wind scattering your ashes
across the baseball field at Woodstock Park.
How, then, can I stoop to wash my face in the surprise
of blackberry blossoms white above the rosy dianthus?

Across the baseball field at Woodstock Park
you ran from center field, threw the ball like a hot star
of blackberry blossoms white above the rosy dianthus.
I wonder how many springs

you ran from center field, threw the ball like a hot star.
On the vacant lot beside our house
I wonder how many springs
I pitched it burning into your glove.

On the vacant lot beside our house,
training you not to flinch,
I pitched it burning into your glove.
Now in your forty-seventh spring, you buy a cap for the balding.

Training you not to flinch
the radiologist beams a light into your body.
In your forty-seventh spring, you buy a cap for the balding.
You lie on the table, center field, eyes squinting.

The radiologist beams a light into your body.
Each X-mark on your chest becomes a glove.
You lie on the table, center field, eyes squinting.
You catch every ray. Smile when you leave, adjusting the cap.

Each X-mark on your chest becomes a glove.
How, then, can I stoop to wash my face in the surprise?
You catch every ray. Smile when you leave, adjusting the cap.
And today I imagine the wind scattering your ashes.

To Paint the Portrait of a Baby Bird
                            after Jacques Prévert

                        that dangles like the sacrificial worm
                                                                           in his beak.
                                            Finish by painting the leaves where he flew
                                                                                         trembling    as if in
wind

Irene Blair Honeycutt, of Charlotte, was awarded Teacher of the Year for Teaching Excellence at Central Piedmont Community College. She is founder and director of the college's annual Spring Literary Festival. She also teaches writing through continuing education at Queens University and leads workshops around the region. In addition, her interests in mythology and classic fairy tales led her to teach classes through the Haden Institute.

D-N Publishing will publish her first children's book, The Prince with the Golden Hair, a fairy tale for children of all ages. Ms. Honeycutt will conduct a workshop on "The Magical Power of Fairy Tales" at the Spring Literary Festival in March. See details about all Festival events by checking the evolving web site: www.cpcc.edu/literary.

Novello Festival Press published Ms. Honeycutt's most recent book of poetry, Waiting for the Trout to Speak, in 2002. ("How Can I Stoop to Wash My Face in the Surprise" and "To Paint the Portrait of a Baby Bird" are drawn from this book.) Ms. Honeycutt's first collection, It Comes as a Dark Surprise, won Sandstone Publishing's Regional Poetry Contest in 1992 and is in its fourth printing. ("Adobe Night" is drawn from this collection.) Her poems have won awards and have appeared in national journals, including Nimrod, Asheville Poetry Review, Cold Mountain Review, Southern Poetry Review, Pembroke Magazine, Devil's Millhopper, Croton Review, Crucible, The Arts Journal, and St. Andrews Review.

In 1998 Creative Loafing Magazine acknowledged Irene with a "Best of Charlotte" award for "Best Contribution to the Improvement of the Literary Climate in the City of Charlotte." She has studied at Bread Loaf in Vermont and at the Art of the Wild Writers Workshop in Squaw Valley, California. She received a North Carolina Arts Council scholarship in 1995 to study at the Prague Summer Writers Workshop, in the Czech Republic, and in 2000 she received a fellowship from the Charlotte Arts and Science Council.

January 30 - February 5, 2006: Ron Rash

I met Ron Rash across a table in downtown Chapel Hill, during the North Carolina Literary Festival, a few years ago. Fred Chappell introduced us and remarked on how differently each of us writes about our mountain material, commenting that Ron uses syllabics for much of his poetry, whereas I tend toward the anapestic and variations thereof. Since then Ron has become one of our own in Cullowhee, having been appointed to the Parris Professorship at Western Carolina University. No matter how famous, if not rich, Ron may become, he will remain the unpretentious person he is, the one we are proud to call neighbor and friend. His poetry is as strong as the mountain voices from which it springs, moving with authority and complete honesty of tone, emotion, and detail. Reading a Ron Rash poem is as close as one can come to experiencing the real terrain of our North Carolina mountains without setting foot in them. His sturdy, believable, often breathtaking poems enable us to journey to the summit, where spread beneath us we can see the lives of his people in their courage and integrity. -- K.S.B.

Mirror

Ordered from Winston-Salem,
hauled by train far as Lenoir,
unboxed, bundled in blankets,
wagoned north to Blowing Rock,
jolted across Middlefork,
geed and hawed uphill while hands
braced it from sliding where land
slanted sharp as a barn roof,
before finally there, and then
brought through doors like a body,
unwrapped and righted so that
after five years of breaking
land that had tried to break her,
after three children, so long
seeing her face only in
wrinkles of water, she will
step free of her bedclothes while
children and husband still sleep,
stand in the mirror's embrace,
let face, breasts, child-widened hips,
come clear in first light and find
only herself, which is all
she wishes for this moment.

Black-eyed Susans

The hay was belt-buckle high
when rain let up, three-days' sun
baked stalks dry, and by midday
all but the far pasture mowed,
raked into wind rows, above
June sky still blue so I drove
my tractor up on the ridge
to the far pasture where strands
of sagging barbed wire marked where
my land stopped, church land began,
knowing I'd find some grave-gift,
flowers, flag, styrofoam cross
blown on my land, and so first
walked the boundary, made sure what
belonged on the other side
got returned, soon enough saw,
black-eyed susans, the same kind
growing in my yard, tied to
the bow a tight-folded note.
Always was all that it said,
which said enough for I knew
what grave that note belonged to,
and knew as well who wrote it,
she and him married three months
when he died, now always young,
always their love in first bloom,
too new to life to know life
was no honeymoon. Instead,
she learned that lesson with me
over three decades, what fires
our flesh set early on cooled
by time and just surviving,
and learned why old folks called it
getting hitched, because like mules
so much of life was one long row
you never saw the end of,
and always he was close by,
under a stone you could see
from the porch, wedding picture
she kept hid in her drawer,
his black-and-white flash-bulb grin
grinning at me like he knew
he'd made me more of a ghost
to her than he'd ever be.
There at that moment -- that word
in my hand, his grave so close,
if I'd had a shovel near
I'd have dug him up right then,
hung his bones up on the fence
like a varmint, made her see
what the real was, for memory
is always the easiest
thing to love, to keep alive
in the heart. After awhile
I lay the note and bouquet
where they belonged, never spoke
a word about it to her
then or ever, even when
she was dying, calling his
name with her last words. Sometimes
on a Sunday afternoon
I'll cross the pasture, make sure
her stone's not starting to lean,
if it's early summer bring
black-eyed susans for her grave,
leave a few on his as well,
for soon enough we'll all be
sleeping together, beyond
all things that ever mattered.

Waterdogs

You can live a life without
knowing they exist if sky
is something glimpsed out windows,
clouds are spread-out scrolls written
in a lost language. To find
such small, ephemeral rainbows
what is above must matter,
must be looked for in August
from a wide field where cornstalks
pant and stagger, tobacco
threatens to cure months early.
You must be a man who scuffs
his boot toe against loose skiffs
of dust, searching to find dirt,
then looks up, passing clouds read
like pages turned in a book
to find these damasked commas
which promise coming thunder.

The Dowry

No Virginia truce could end
what had spread like crown fire to
the farthest shut-in, back cove
of Madison County, war
made tribal as cliff-dwellers
fought valley neighbors, blood spilled
but enough bad blood remained
to fill hearts for years, and when
Jake Shelton came to the door
of Colonel Chandler's study,
asked for the hand of Jenny,
the Colonel raised an empty
gray sleeve in answer, vowed no
yankee soldier would ever
win his daughter's hand until
what he'd lost to a sniper
filled that sleeve again, for months
that missing limb his reply
to pleas of wife and daughter,
kinsman and preacher who spoke
in vain of time's healing balm,
until one April evening
Jake Shelton brought the Colonel
an offering -- gauze -wrapped, balanced
on his left palm as though on
a pair of scales, the right wrist
blood-staunched by a lover's knot.

Ron Rash's family has lived in the southern Appalachian mountains since the mid-1700s, and it is this region that is the primary focus of his writing. Rash grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, and graduated from Gardner-Webb College and Clemson University. He holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University. In 1994 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a fellowship for poetry. In 1996 he won the Sherwood Anderson Prize and in 2001 he won the Novello Festival Novel Award, which brought with it publication of his novel and in 2002 was awarded Foreword Magazine's Gold Medal in Literary Fiction for his novel One Foot in Eden, which was named Appalachian Book of the Year. In 2005 his novel Saints at the River was named Fiction Book of the Year by both the Southern Book Critics Circle and the Southeastern Booksellers Association. In 2005 Ron Rash won an O. Henry award for his story "Speckled Trout." That same year he was given the James Still Award by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His poetry and fiction have appeared in more than a hundred journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The Longman Anthology of Southern Literature, Western Wind, Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah and Poetry. He is the author of six books: The Night The New Jesus Fell to Earth and Casualties (short stories); Eureka Mill, Among the Believers, and Raising the Dead (poetry); One Foot in Eden and Saints at the River (novels). Henry Holt will publish his third novel, The World Made Straight, in April.