April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Brandon Graham
My Daddy always liked to say
“The Blue Ridge Parkway
is the prettiest place
on God’s green earth.”
‘Course his heart
calls that part of the country home
so you have to allow for some bias.
He said it again
the day my cousin Tim drove us
crazy fast,
flipping us around
hairpin switch backs
on a one lane
unpaved country lane
that stepped like stairs
up the side of a round top mountain
not more than nine miles
from the spot my Daddy was born
and his own Daddy dropped dead.
“This is the cutest little church
you ever seen,” Tim is saying
‘cause he’s a preacher
fresh out of bible school
and he got himself an old country church
he wants to show us real bad.
The road just stops,
butts right up to Blue Ridge Bible Baptist,
like the road was just a long
twisted ribbon of driveway.
The church is one, cavernous
brown room
with dark pews down
both sides of a central isle
leading strait to a pulpit.
Tall windows
along the sidewalls
with dried glazing
and cracked panes
let the
honest
God-fearing
mountain air
blow straight through.
Tim stands up front,
strides around,
his tennis shoe stomping pretty good
sending echoes off the walls
telling us this and that
about his plans
for the souls
of the dirt farmers
who gather to learn the wisdom
that my twenty-two year old cousin
has to offer.
After a time we pop the trunk on his car
and pull out a squirrel gun
Tim called it a “four ten twenty-two over under”
Which I know now
means it had two different barrels for two kinds of ammo
stacked one on the other.
Behind the bible church
we drag an old log
across a gully
and line it with the rusted
tin cans we find
lying around
plus the fender
off an old motorcycle
that quit running
decades earlier
and was left to rot.
I stand with my back to the church
close one eye
line-up down the barrel
and fill the mountain top
with thunder.
That first shot kicks,
I stumble over
fall on my ass
in wet leaves.
I stay there,
in the wet
looking up at the sun
the canopy swaying
over head
as the boy preacher
and my Daddy laugh and laugh.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Chalisse Breeden
I scattered your ashes as you requested
on horseback
horse galloping in clapping rhythms
and with the free behind me
you asked for one verse of song
with all the love I could muster in my lungs
amazing grace
how sweet the sound
I sang loud enough for the wind to catch it and push it around
in hopes that along with it
it would take this pain u requested me not to feel
please save a wretch like you
like me
maybe i’ll tell myself you’re there in the violet hushes of the sunset
or that you’re watching behind the blinding heat of the sun
and that i hadn’t done what i had done
you hung on long enough for me to say the miscellaneous things
we held hands and glances before u let go of the world and me
you requested i make sure i never leave you to the shadows of misery
that i finish things when u grew weak
you didn’t want to hear and not see
or stare at mute things
or wobble without direction
or ache endlessly
and i promised but now this promise feels like murder to me
and i wish i would’ve thought to ask you to send peace
and mercy when you reach the King
now i’m on horse whose galloping
your ashes dancing in the wind ascending
the free behind as you requested of me
and a verse of song
amazing grace
please make a sound
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Mackenzie Slaughter
When I walk along the waterfront of west Michigan, I forget about west Michigan. I like that. I like the sense of limbo, that this convergence of sea and sand is neither all water, nor all land. Your will determines whether you choose to bounce on the beam of beach or edge into the surf. This is where I want my fresh corpse to be celebrated in true Viking fashion, my blazing body upon a wooden pyre, pushed off towards the horizon. It would be a funeral fit for Terry Malloy. You could be Terry Malloy. A contender. You could strike when the timing is right, block the blows bestowed you, and manage to rise to your feet when you’re a crumpled, bloodied mess.
No matter the performance of your roles, or the tenacity in your battles, your dream of immortality will asphyxiate under a marginal tombstone. Panic ensues. Run away. Road trip! We’ll raid the complacent bars of San Francisco; kneel before the spirit-dispensing altar. Our bartender, aglow, God-like in the neon light, fills up our empty mugs and souls. Desperate diversions rest in the tips of our cigarettes. In time, we’ll stagger intoxicated to Pacific Coast Highway One. To reach the summit, motions are of significance. Funny how such orchestration leads to a precipice. Behind Walgreens, in the dumpster, is where I want my ashes scattered. I want my bone cocaine to settle in the Galapagos oasis of solidified kitchen grease, mingle with the speckling of chicken bones. We all know the finality awaiting us – what does it matter?
Come, fellow lemming,
Mr. Caulfield saves those who
fall, not those who leap.
Mackenzie Slaughter is a student at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She refuses to let periods of drudgery smother her creative zest.
