Recently PUBLISHED... Yes, Yours Truly

In the most recent issue of The North Carolina Literary Review. Third time's a charm, right?

Poem on a Photograph in an Exhibit About Appalachia
Those are my knees from behind the porch pole.
Dirty, I know.
You don’t see my face – I’m turned to James Wilson-
he’s two and has to be held.
Mama looks skinnier than I remembered,
I guess we all do,
though I never thought we was thin—
with flowers in pails on the porch rail.
I do recall how the sun always shone off her skin –
she gave that to us.
Our shadows reached halfway to the steps.
The cats always curled around them, and us,
to get at the warm.
The picture was took summer ’fore I started school.
The porch smelled of bees and dust,
and, well, sweat of course,
and when a stranger came, of mint,
cause he wouldn’t know to walk around the small plant of it
just to the right of the first step.
I was scratchin a skeeter bite behind my knee,
the boys was watchin the dogs run,
starin at the photographer’s shiny car.
But Mama’s hoverin and holdin and fixin us
to be neat for him.
She’s not smiling but I remember her happy then.
I know she’d be proud now,
to see her flowers all there on the porch,
in the sun.

Quote: "When we deliberately alter our consciousness in any way, we're trying to find the Self. When the alcoholic collapses in the gutter, that voice that tells him, "I'll save you," comes from the Self.
The Self is our deepest being.
The Self is united to God." ~ Steven Pressfield, The War of Art