Bent Country

Odetta: Bravery in Vision and Voice

2012-02-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

Coal Poetry

2012-02-08T03:13:00.000-08:00

Recently gave an interview that will be appearing later this spring. I shared during the interview a previously unpublished poem I wrote in 2003 while working picking rock and charging scoop at a coal mine. I write little poetry, but I've always been fond of this one because of the memories it brings back. I don't think they'd mind if I included it here in this post. Have a look, if you'd like:

I Could Feel the Ground Move

Some people talk about

feeling the ground move.

They say, "I swear I

could feel the ground

move."

Watch men move mountains

and see, it's not so

romantic.

What's romantic about

coal-covered faces and

hats with lights

struggling after a shift

beside open truck doors

to change pants so

they can keep the seats

clean?

Maybe a lot.

Maybe it means a lot to

the wife and kids,

something real they can see,

true effort, not the idea of

some black hole where

the ground moves.

Jarrid Deaton Writes Like Nobody's Business

2012-02-07T03:33:00.000-08:00

It's always worth a reminder to read Jarrid Deaton's work. Here's a story of his called "Ted Bundy's Beetle". Enjoy. I know you will, fine folks.

Foxhead Books Is Worth A Look, Good Folks

2012-02-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

A lot of folks are visiting the Facebook page for Foxhead Books and liking it like mad. I invite those who have not had a look do so. I believe you’ll like it as well.

Foxhead has already published Paul Kerschen, Parker Fritz and will soon publish books from myself and Julie Innis. The ball is rolling and it’s a sight to see.

You kind find the Facebook page here, and thanks for your continued interest!

New Work at Apocrypha & Abstractions

2012-01-24T06:22:00.000-08:00

I recent story of mine, "Tomorrow", was published at Apocrypha & Abstractions. Thanks very much to the editors for including it, and to those who may take time to read it.

Robert Vaughan releases Flash Fiction Fridays anthology

2012-01-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

Robert Vaughan has put together an anthology of flash fiction from his past radio programs on which he and other writers read flash pieces. It's a packed collection of razor good work. You can get your hands on a copy here. Please do so if you're able. You won't regret what this anthology has to offer.

2012-01-20T07:37:00.001-08:00

Crews...Again. Don't Think For A Second You Can Get Enough.

2012-01-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

Something To Keep Us Until Tomorrow.

2012-01-16T05:37:00.000-08:00

Some years back Cynthia Kadohata wrote what I found to be a fine essay about the life and work of Breece Pancake. I took issue with only one section, which follows:

"I don't think in any case that my goal was quite to know or understand him. Because I admired his writing so much, what I've wanted all along is simply to know not why but when it was that he passed from anguish to despair, as if by finding exactly the moment I could cause some sort of magical chain reaction, and he would not have died the way he did."

In an essay of my own, in the final paragraph, I made my own statement about Ms. Kadohata's thought, which follows:

"But Breece would not want consideration for his life, not from a fellow writer, anyway. Every word he wrote was a study in craft and sheer work and effort. His own life was secondary, at the very least a loosely spun inspiration or guidebook for his precious characters. Pancake might have been more pleased with consideration for the plainness of his grave, the cemetery stretching beyond it, the woods and the creatures - the fox, the deer - huddled there, watching, starving, alert for something to keep them until tomorrow."

Remember.

2012-01-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

Some Information About My Home, Appalachia.

2012-01-13T04:19:00.000-08:00

For those perhaps interested. Have a look.

Playing Catch With Fire

2012-01-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

It was cold, and the cold always made it hard to catch a shotgun pass. Ronnie's fingers were already so rigid from the wind they were a light blue. Not alarming, but enough to make him distracted at all the wrong times.

"Watch the spiral," his father said.

Through the wind and dull light of early evening, the words sounded muffled to Ronnie, but he held his hands up anyway, figuring correctly it was some sort of instruction about the next pass.

Place your middle and next finger on the second and third thread of the football. Wrap your thumb around the back and give it a good squeeze. Fire, fire, fire.

The football made a small sound moving through the air and landed against Ronnie's outstretched hand with a blast of power. He forced his teeth together, at once aware of the chilled air sailing over his nose hairs and into his lungs. He let the ball drop on the pavement. His fingers, all of them, had made popping sounds when the ball hit. Now his knuckles felt ready to tear away from the joints.

"Don't worry about the catching. We'll work on that later. Now grab that thing up and put your fingers were I said. Watch it spiral. Right now, straight at my chest."

Fire, fire, fire.

Ronnie shook his hands and pulled them to his lips. He bent, grabbed the football. He put it under his arm and then cupped his hands together, pushing warm breath between them. The warm air coated his bent and swelled fingers. When he tried to take the football in his hands, he couldn't. His fingers wouldn't close. He didn't say anything, though, he kept trying and dropped it once, twice, three times onto the pavement. A light snow started to fall.

"Just kick it back up here, Ronnie," his father said. He planted his hands on his knees and dangled his head toward the frozen ground.

Ronnie did as he was told and tapped the ball with the front of his shoe. It lopped and rolled off into the grass near the road about a foot from his father. His father shook his head and snorted through his nose. "Now get ready for this one." He pulled the ball back and smacked it twice to get a good grip.

The football moved in a perfect spiral through the air, splitting the small flakes of snow on its way to Ronnie. Mesmerizing, hypnotic, slightly beautiful. He didn't feel any pain when the ball hit him in the nose. Things went numb and then his face was full of heat and his neck was tingling and warm. Sticky wetness spread across his chest.

Ronnie looked at his father stretched out a hundred miles away. He was a spot of dark against dark in the fading light, arms to his side and his head cocked to the left. Ronnie searched for the football as best as he could with the blinding skim of tears draining from his eyes. The tears and the snowflakes mixed with small splatter spots of blood across the pavement. When he did manage to find the football, there were small drops of blood across the letters and standing out brighter against the off-white threading.

Ronnie's hands, his fingers, weren't cold now. Nothing about him was cold. It was all red fury and blood moving quickly through his arms and legs. He thought he might toss the football aside and charge his father, all might and will and weak ambition and rage. He picked the football up and ran toward his father with the ball cocked back over his shoulder. He thought of just running into him full-blown and tiny. His anger would have made up for all that. Instead, he let the ball go when he was halfway to his father.

It was no perfect spiral like the one that had flattened his nose and busted veins the doctor would later say looked like wild lightning racing toward his forehead. It was crazy and tilting and pushed through the cold air in clumsy chunks of twisting brown, lame and flat and slow. His father only leaned out a couple inches and caught the ball in one large palm. He didn't bother closing his fingers, never bothered to take his eyes off Ronnie, who was now doubled up in the road with blood running from his broken nose and onto his shoes.

"Gone on ahead and catch this one," his father said, and underhanded the ball at Ronnie.

It was a light toss but it hit Ronnie on the side of the head and random spears of pain ran from his temples and into his face. He touched his nose with his useless fingers. It was swelled and stretched against his cheekbones.

"Pick it up. Sometimes there's pain. Can't just fold, Ronnie. Can't just give up." He walked across the pavement, closed the distance between them, and Ronnie thought he might lean over and check his injury. Instead, he gripped the ball and brought it to Ronnie's chest. "Can't just give up, Ronnie. That's just what he wants. Can't let them win, little man."

Ronnie heard the words but was lost. The only things he was sure of was that he was not going to the hospital right then and he was going to continue passing football with his father.

He picked the football up out of the building layer of snow that covered the ground. He tucked it to his side and watched his father swagger back to his spot. He walked back to his spot and searched for the threads on the football.

It felt like loading the gun for his execution.

Just Listen. Thank You.

2012-01-10T05:16:00.000-08:00

Year of the Anthology

2012-01-08T03:58:00.000-08:00

A week into the new year and it's already shaping up to be the Year of the Anthology. I'm enjoying it, as I've been fortunate to be a part of many of these appearing or set to appear of late.

I wrote here recently of PS Books Stripped anthology, which you can buy now at Amazon and Lulu.

Next came news that Robert Vaughn is putting together a chapbook of stories read over the past year on his Lake Effect's Flash Fiction Friday show. Robert read my Pushcart nominated story "Coming By It Honest" on that show and will now be including it in the chapbook along with others shared on his segment over the course of 2011 in the near future. I'm thankful to Robert for that gesture, and for offering me the chance to be a part of the program in the first place. I'll keeps those interested posted as I'm updated on the project's development.

And only yesterday, I received a surprising correspondence that Meg Tuite has published a collection of the stories compiled during Used Furniture Review's Exquisite Quartet series, an endeavor that brought numerous fine collaborative stories from a host of writers, including a collaboration from this simple storyteller called "Couple Counseling." That anthology can now be snatched up here via Lulu. Please have a look and get a copy, if you'd be so inclined.

Stripped, A Collection of Anonymous Flash, Launches

2012-01-05T09:11:00.001-08:00

The greatly anticipated launch of STRIPPED, a collection of anonymous flash, is now available. You can buy via Amazon here and Lulu here.

What's STRIPPED? A breakthrough collection of stories edited by Nicole Monaghan who gathered together a slew of writers, a fine mix of both female and male scribblers, and asked for stories that became this grand collection. The idea was to have no bylines on the stories, only contributor notes for each of the writers included. The actual writers of each story will be released later, a gender experiment not before attempted in literature, I think.

I was lucky enough to be included among several noted writers, and this simple storyteller is grateful, and hopes you'll buy a copy. A lot of love went into this collection.

Untitled

2012-01-03T07:36:00.001-08:00

A True Story in Fiction

2012-01-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

NOTE: The following is a chapter from the first draft of my novel DYSPHORIA.

The kitchen was quiet and wrapped in warm brown colors. The scent of butter and fried meats was everywhere. And it was quiet, except for Paul's fork sliding across the porcelain surface of his dinner plate.

It was a sound he barely noticed, concentrating on each bite.

Paul's grandmother was at the head of the table and his father sat across from him. His father was busy with his own plate of food. Paul watched him absently poke his fork into a mound of mashed potatoes. Paul didn't look up from his plate and so he didn't notice how his father stared at him.

Blank.

Nothing.

Two tired blue eyes gazing and lost behind an oily and matted clump of raven black hair. Below, a fork worked mechanically, going through familiar motions. His mouth was pulled into a long and permanent frown so the corners of his horse-hair mustache rubbed close to the middle of a military chin. It was one hard part of a face, stripped of emotion and pock-marked from severe acne.

Paul's grandmother was quiet in her chair. Her eyes were tight inside trembling sockets. Waiting. Worried. Somehow expectant.

Paul saw none of this. He kept his head down and moved his fork across his plate in brief screeches and pulls.

Then the room exploded and everything was bright blue electricity.

Paul's father jumped out of his chair. His grandmother leaned back, surprised, and flung her arms out to either protect herself or stop her son. Blue fierce eyes and tangled hair quivered and shook across the room, leading his father closer, hurled from the force of a phantom tornado. A fast moving mouth and violent, incoherent yelling became Paul's sensory world. His stomach walls beat against his ribs. His fork fell to the floor. The sound of it clattering to the floor was lost in a gale of screams.

Few other things mattered at all now. He rushed past his father, who grabbed the sides of the table and gained ground across the kitchen. Paul struggled around a corner and into the hallway, but fell roughly on the trampled carpet and burned raw streaks across both his knees. The pink burns immediately ached through to his kneecaps, but behind him was the sound of heaving breathing and so he pin-balled his way through the hallway. The breathing coming from behind him was interrupted with shouted questions about what he thought he was doing. Was he starved to death? Wasn't there enough food? Was he so hungry he had to scrape the plate over and over and over?

The entire thing was brief and years later Paul would shorten his memory of it even more, edit most of it and leave only the last, when his father cornered him in the bathroom. He would remember his father bending low into his face where he stuck himself between the bathtub and the clothes hamper, screaming at him in a blur of anger and sickness, maniac and out of control, without regret until too late, when it no longer mattered.

And Flannery O' Conner says...

2012-01-03T05:39:00.000-08:00

"...anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."

Work Appearing in Wilderness House Literary Review

2012-01-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

I have a series of micro stories in Wilderness House Literary Review. They are titled "Four Micros in Second-Person" if you'd be interested in having a look at them.

Today's Letter is...C for Cool Story...Ok, CS. Jeez.

2011-12-31T09:50:00.000-08:00

Wanna read a cool story? Okay, then. Read this by Mike Hampton.

Book and Song

2011-12-30T03:34:00.000-08:00

Paul Kerschen's The Drowned Library is still available and will be for awhile, good people. Purchase here from Foxhead Books. Thanks.

Launch date for my collection The Same Terrible Storm through Foxhead is still set for January or February. Early proofs look good, cover, etc. Still have some edits to tune up in the coming weeks, but it's coming along nicely.

Here's a song I like:

Wikiphotomicro Concludes for 2011

2011-12-22T05:10:00.001-08:00

That's it folks. Twelve days was the number. It was fun doing this again, and I hope those of you who read enjoyed.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 12 - "Signs"

2011-12-21T03:16:00.000-08:00

Any sign will do. A sparrow at my ear, the sound of the C&O bending rails through Terry County, a whisper from something or someone unknown. We're never lost, just misplaced. The top shelf in the kitchen, tucked in a drawer full of thoughts all trying to smother us given the chance. But never lost. Still, a sign would be a welcoming thing, a branch clutched in the sparrow's beak, a wave from the engineer through early morning gloom, a whisper from a father or mother's voice telling us we're walking in the right direction, telling us to run before it's too late. Telling us all the things we've never heard before.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 11 - "Inside Every Woman"

2011-12-20T05:34:00.000-08:00

In my dream, Neva didn't so much cheat on me as she cheated in front of me, with three truck drivers while we ate breakfast at Clay's Kitchen. The four of them did so casually at our booth while my eggs sat untouched in a dirty plate.

I knew certain dreams could be visions from God. Dad dreamed of his own future, had witnessed to it, claiming it a vision, and these gifts were often inherited, the church said. Dad told everyone that his family would be taken from him and that he would not live long, his heart crushed.

There were no instructions in this vision, Dad told the stunned congregation, only the understanding that the Lord will not abandon me during this time. I came away with no instructions and no understanding, but the Neva in my dream was the Neva of my past. And that could never happen.

I met her while playing in a punk-rock band during my rebellious years away from the church. There was mostly pot and then more Budweiser and Old Fitzgerald and Jack Daniels on top of that, but a few years in, the band switched to cocaine. Rooms were left spotted with foul clues that humans might have spent time there, hard and strange time, warped time. I dabbled less with cocaine than some of the others, but during this period the music became a phantom excuse.

The few times I did take part, pinching my nostrils afterwards until it seemed the soft bones might push through the skin, I did so only because Neva was there, staring at me with warm hair and killer eyes. Two three four times she would bend over the coffee table in tight denim and take lines, that warm hair splashed out from her head, a giant dark hand, a claw with thousands of needle-thin fingers, clutching and pushing her head down from above, through the ceiling from some kind of heaven-hell, cheekbone against wood, throat stretched tight.

It was how she had looked in my dream in front of me and my cold eggs.

I decided to take action after my dream, but I spoke to no one about it. Mysterious, mysterious ways. A fanatic, an addict, believes in the excuse more than he believes in anything else. And when I prayed, I prayed very quietly while Neva slept beside me, the easy sound of her breathing steadying my thoughts like something holy, something wrathful.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 10 - "On Photographing the Archangel Troy"

2011-12-19T05:34:00.000-08:00

Note: The following photo post is from a photograph not included at Wikipedia. It is from Shelby Lee Adams' new book of photographs "salt & truth". The short short is from one of Shelby's photographs on page 52 of the book, which can be purchased here:

https://candelabooks.com/our-books/salt-truth-by-shelby-lee-adams/

On Photographing the Archangel Troy

I'm not going to smile while doing this, son.

This is a serious thing you're laying witness to. Faith that the All Mighty will cloak me in angel's armor borrowed from Michael on a slow day in the battle for all above us and all this worldly hardness below.

I won't smile.

I want the All Mighty to know I take his gift and blessing seriously. I want Him to know I'm a tough sonofabitch forged from this hardness, made a part of it, born from and raised in fire, who can join His ranks as soon as He's ready for me to fall in line.

Wikiphotomicro Day 9: "Half a Sniper"

2011-12-18T06:45:00.000-08:00

More tours in Vietnam than he ever spoke of, but most of us knew. A sniper, they said. Never him. He never said the word that I could remember. But at least three tours, and he returned home without injury.

Then, a month after Jerry came home he was hunting with his brother and through unclear circumstances his brother’s shotgun fired, the barrel inches from Jerry’s kneecap. He lost the bottom half of his leg, his brother dragging him across the ridge to the old home place and then to the hospital.

Three tours or more, and then half a leg gone and enough talent with a gun to be dangerous. And left alone.

Jerry made few friends after that.

*

In the truck, with his near-rotted set of crutches tucked beside him along the driver’s door, Jerry is talking about the roofing job we’re heading out to this morning. He climbs a ladder using the stump, climbs it faster than me or the other workers. He lays down more shingles and faster than any of us combined, using that same stump as a third hand to hold while he tacks.

It’s middle summer and we’re contracted on a small job in Kenton, so we start early, before dawn, to avoid as much of the heat as possible. Jerry is talking about this as the sun appears over the rounded hump of the Appalachians. A small but large-eyed bird begins to circle low in the sky, about twenty feet above us.

Jerry points it out, says for me to watch, and pulls a pistol from under his seat. He situates it in his left hand and sticks the pistol out his driver’s window. When he takes out the circling bird with a single shot, he pulls the pistol back through the window and casually places it under his seat again.

That’s something else, I say. But I’m worried. Jerry is right-handed, but that must not matter when it comes to killing. I’m hoping it’s a short day. Let it rain, let the building catch fire. His stump seems to talk, to motion itself in my direction from the edge of Jerry’s seat, taunting, explaining things I cannot understand.

*

Midday. Water. Sitting on the ground and off the roof. The ground always felt different after hours on a roof. More water, breathing, free arm dangling and broken it seems from packing fifty pound bundles of shingles to Jerry. Jerry could cover ten squares on a roof in a no time flat, but getting bundles to the roof was not an option.

I drain a second bottle, chew some ice from the cooler and ask where Jerry’s got off to. A couple guys tell me Jerry’s still on the roof, so I climb the ladder.

At the far end of the roof, balanced at the peak, Jerry is staring into the distance. I search for the sky for birds, remembering his shot from earlier that morning. The sky is empty, hot blue and three clouds.

When I make my way to him, Jerry tells me I’m wrong. I asked him what he was looking at, and he told me I was wrong. Wrong.

Wikiphotomicro Day 8: "Perishable"

2011-12-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

The icicle tasted like nothing at all. Not at first. Then before long there was the faintest bit of boiled egg, the sulfur from the mountainside where Shepherd pulled it loose easing through the top layer of frost as it gave way to the shine and streaks of mud beneath.

Dougie hadn’t asked Shepherd to stop and get the icicle. He had only pointed them out as they sped along Route 34. A stalactite row of them lined the rock wall and Dougie pointed and said, They look like teeth, Mom.

Shepherd pulled the car to the side of the road, butting against an embankment of snow piled by the county road crew, and parked.

Shepherd wasn’t Dougie’s real dad. He drank. His real dad did not. He was stronger than his real dad. He was taller. He always smelled like beer, but there was no beer belly sagging when he stepped from the driver’s side of the bitty MG they were driving and tromped through the snow to a large icicle hanging about ten feet from the car.

Dougie looked first to his Mom, but she only stared straight ahead through the frost-covered windshield. She was looking for something. That’s how it seemed. He let her look and examined his icicle.

Once, at the Terry County Fair and Bluegrass Concert, he saw a booth with candy that looked like the icicle. Only difference was it was colored all pink and blue, and a lot smaller. He broke the tip off and chomped at it – horse to apple, dog to leftovers.

It tasted strange, like eggs left on the stove overnight. In its slender body he could see bugs caught in the ice, small ones and a large one near the thickest part. Shepherd was yelling at his Mom and his Mom was still looking ahead. He couldn’t tell now what she was looking for, but he took another bite, a larger one this time, and wrinkled his nose.

Making sure he looked away from the rearview mirror when he did, Dougie gagged. If it were blue and pink it might taste better. This wasn’t like the candy at the fair, he finally said. It came out a whisper in the middle of all that talking and yelling and silence and searching.

Shepherd sped along the road until he jerked into Tackett’s Market’s parking lot. The MG door slammed so hard his Mom finally stole her gaze away from the windshield, turned to Dougie.

Watch now what happens, she said. Watch what happens now and see how bad it gets, she said, and Dougie knew what she meant as much as he didn’t know.

The MG door popped open fast. Shepherd tossed a pack of cherry Kool-Aid into his lap, told him to pour it over the thing and see if that helped. That’ll help, he said, and his voice has lowered and Dougie opened the pack and spread the contents across what was left of the icicle.

But soon the icicle was nearly melted. The icicle was more or less gone, a fragile thing in his lap, the raspberry sugar just bright, wet spots on his jeans and hands, the same as he saw later that night across the living room wall, the hardwood floor, across his mom’s high, proud cheekbone.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 7: "From a Blast or a Divine Hand"

2011-12-16T06:23:00.000-08:00

If I could invent myself, arrive in the world from a blast or by a divine hand, but invent myself, have some say in anything at all.

Bullfrogs and wings and not busting their asses.

After a time, I might reconsider the whole thing, my existence in this world or another. I might begin to wonder if I could reinvent those around me, train them to my will. In short, I might go crazy and stay drunk on creation and power and wrath.

Pillars of salt and fires and floods.

It would be nothing holy, though, unless you look to the heavens and see stars and constellations and then something more, a light brighter than can be seen by those still bitter for having been born without permission.

But I would have chosen to arrive, make my own North Star and follow it wherever my newly made heart might decide.

Solitude and loneliness, beyond imagination.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 6: "A Gold Dress for Madeline"

2011-12-15T03:42:00.000-08:00

You sat for hours days on end for that painting, ma’am. It’s terribly strange you can’t remember. Do you remember the gold, actual gold, he draped you in? Nothing at all? Not the first memory? So strange, and sad, if you don’t mind my saying.

At least you should remember that gold, how it shined. It seemed to make the mop water brighter, better. It seemed to drip like wine from end of the mop. And this old dress even seemed beautiful in its light. You were radiant, ma’am, and you don’t have so much as a single moment of recollection.

Now that I consider it, you were pale and even more pallid now. Maybe a walk would do you good. We should go to the garden. You could stand beneath the peach tree you love so much. Fresh air and peach trees and flowers.

Where is the dress, ma’am? I should like to show it to my daughter when she finishes her work for the day. Not until then, mind you. He would never have that. We are not paid and given food and shelter and clothing to prance around in gold dresses.

But, if we were, we would remember it. So pale, white as a sheet, if you don’t mind me saying. And if you do, I don’t see much of anything you could do about it now.

Where is the dress, so I can show it to my Madeline? I know you will tell me, you ungrateful, weak woman. And if you don’t, then I will let you die here on this crumpled bed and be done with you.

Do you know what it’s like to see gold shimmering up at you from mop water? Of course you don’t. But you know what pain is. We all feel pain. That broken wrist of yours. It is nothing when compared to seeing your child stooped for all of her walking years, her little hands faded and wrinkled as dish towels.

So, I ask again – where is my Madeline’s dress? If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 5: "The Function of a Motor"

2011-12-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

The dirt is always there, beneath the nails. It is permanent as a tattoo, broken across ten spaces from thumb to thumb. He eats lunch without washing, always. He has learned not to taste the oil and grease or tastes it and doesn’t care. These aren’t things he thinks about often. For now, as he is found to do, he thinks of nothing. If anything, he thinks of the sandwich pinched between the fingers, the small bottle of water at the tip of his boot, the rotating sun but only as it relates to the heat he must work in until quitting time. The world around him is simply the world around him and he little more than a part of that world, no more or less important than the truck that sits waiting to be fixed or the cloud that crawls the sky in need of nothing.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 4: "Strike or Go Home"

2011-12-13T03:15:00.001-08:00

Strike, strike and keep striking. Even when you’re on defense, making a defensive move, your making an offensive strike. War, argument, conversation. It applies to all of them. We won’t always wear these uniforms, but we can always take with us what we learned. What have we learned? Nothing. We’ve learned nothing but this: Mistakes are not made for us to learn from or for any other reason. Mistakes simply happen and we move forward, always striking. Or you can go home now and die.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 3: "Case Study"

2011-12-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

Everywhere I’ve ever been has tried to eat me alive. How is this place any different? A warm home, working the rails, and now prison. These places are the same to me. They are trying to kill me, these places, these people.

I’m not paranoid. Not capable. It’s just a simple truth, and it’s because of the tamping rod that went through my head on the job.

I never gave that thing a nickname, but I did have my picture taken with it. A couple of times.

But I’m not inclined in anyway whatsoever to go over was is and what was not. What I can tell you is that the dent in the top of my head, where the tamping iron exited when I was setting the powder that day on the cut through.

I was a foreman. Foremen were required to do this. I was admired in this position. That much I remember. Then something went wrong.

To me it was nothing extraordinary, but the doctor who first examined me thought differently. He said the following in his initial report:

“I first noticed the wound upon the head before I alighted from my carriage, the pulsations of the brain being very distinct…Mr. G. got up and vomited; the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor.”

This was Dr. Williams. They took the case over from him soon after that, and it may have been because he was too caught up in the idea of my brain shooting out of my head than he was in helping. Who knows? Who cares?

I killed a man working the sideshows with me. He stole and he smelled bad and just generally bothered most everybody. I thought my fellow workers would understand. But, when they didn’t, I was fine with their crying and calling the authorities.

If you’re wondering, I killed him with the tamping iron. I kept it, until prison, by my side at all times when I could.

It just so happened I had my tamping iron near by bedside on the night this fellow worker, a pinched face man named Claude, tried to rob me in my trailer. I hit him in the chest, and when I saw it wasn’t enough, held him to the floor with my bare foot and shoved the iron through his neck.

I’m Hades bound down, they say, and they can say it all they want. But not a single person in this hellish place is going to send me there. You don’t take a tamping iron through the eye socket and on up through the top of your head to be taken down in such a simple fashion. No matter how much everyone in here wants me dead, everyone everywhere.

Maybe I could sneeze hard or cough and get that pulsing going again and simply get out of this world, this anticipation.

Maybe I shouldn’t be scared of a spoon rubbed down to a point or a toothbrush. I’ve seen worse.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 2 - "The Zoo Keeper"

2011-12-09T03:47:00.001-08:00

It was no surprise everyone thought Butch was crazy. Opening a zoo for African wildlife on his private property. He tried to explain by saying he had the resources and time, the inclination, and when those three come together there wasn't much more you could do but go with your gut.

It was the inclination most people thought was crazy. The rest worked for them. Butch admitted it made sense, the finger pointing and names. But he couldn't explain beyond the basics. Anything else just made it worse.

During the first week of construction, he talked with a local reporter. The reporter seemed nice enough and Butch opened up, talked about the inner voice telling him to do this. It was the most truthful he’d been about the whole thing.

The reporter ran a story that made him look worse than before. The headline was sensational, the story, the quotes were hand picked to blow things out of proportion.

But weren’t they already? It was his brother who said this, just after he had the giraffes shipped in and placed. Thing is, Butch knew his brother was suspect, wanted money. Worse, needed it. He’d say anything to get him off the zoo idea in hopes his big brother would realize there were better uses for his cash.

All things combined to simply push Butch closer and closer to his project. When it was completed, he invited several of his friends and the public to visit. He hoped all would be understood once they arrived and took in the wildlife.

In the first hour, he knew this wasn't going to be the case. Butch heard the gunshot from his carport as he was walking down to meet visitors. A young man shot one a zebra. Butch had put no security measures in place and the young man, a student at the local college, entered without so much as a frisk.

After he shot the zebra, the young man fled into a nearby cropping of woods and was gone. The police located him the following day, but he never fully explained his actions. Said he didn’t even know Butch Gavin.

People called the shooter crazy and then the press made up names for him when they ran their stories. It was all familiar to Butch. He began the process of breaking down the zoo the following week. The animals went first, back onto trucks and various other vehicles.

Butch watched from his front porch, and found no inner voice keeping company with him. There were answers to it all, but he couldn't figure what they could possibly be or why any of this had happened.

He later visited the young man, now on probation and living back with his mother. The mother apologized endlessly when she opened the door. Butch saw the boy shooter sitting on the couch just above her shoulder. He called out his questions while the mother's eyes searched his own for something close to sanity.

Wikiphotomicro: Day 1 - "Transference"

2011-12-08T03:16:00.001-08:00

Elbow to elbow and tension, fear. It's almost as if fear is shifted from one person to the next through something as simple as elbows, tightly pressed together, but moving somehow in spite of everything. Everything you might think of as everything. All your everything thoughts.

Nobody looks skyward, where the smog and smoke and early morning hides the clouds, anything else that could be moving across the city. But it's nice to imagine.

Imagine a bluebird skirting across the lighter blue sky. Dipping here and there. Think of how you are the only person who sees this, and what it makes you feel. But don't say anything to anyone. Keep that revelation to yourself. That peace. Be selfish.

Everyone else is. Everyone. Oh no? Look around, listen. Really listen.

They've learned not to care, they know the city itself cannot feel fear. They are caught up in giving theirs to others, and the hidden sun is unreachable.

Wikiphotomicro Revisited

2011-12-07T03:07:00.000-08:00

Meant to start this again earlier this year and it got away from me.

Basically, for those who probably don't know, last year I chose a random article from Wikipedia and used the image provided as a prompt to write a short short story for 33 days.

That number came from the first person to respond to the original post about the project. I'd like to try that again, so the first to respond to this post with a number is the one I'll use for how long I'll have at it again.

Thanks.

Here Is How Funny Works...Take Notes Stand-Ups.

2011-11-30T06:54:00.000-08:00

Sings for Itself

2011-11-30T06:27:00.001-08:00

Final Edits, Parker Fritz's "In the Fall", Pushcarts and Best of the Web...Oh my!

2011-11-29T03:28:00.000-08:00

Some news in the past couple weeks:

Aside from continued work on my upcoming book The Same Terrible Storm, there's been some other news I'd be happy to share.

Parker Fritz has a photo-essay called "In the Fall" from Foxhead Books that was just the subject of a launch party. Visit here to see images from that launch, and buy Parker's book. Wonderful photography.

I'll take some time to thank Blue Fifth Review and their editorial staff for nominating my short story "Coming By It Honest" for both the Best of the Web anthology and for a Pushcart Prize last week. Congrats also to the others nominated by this consistently intriguing publication.

And just last night I was pleased to learn that Thunderclap Magazine nominated another of my stories from last year "From the Ground up in Four Movements" for a second Pushcart Prize for this past year. It goes without saying I'm more than grateful and humbled to have been considered along with so many fine writers.

Best of luck to all.

Listen to Bill Withers and then LISTEN to Bill Withers.

2011-11-10T07:19:00.001-08:00

Newness from Foxhead Books

2011-11-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

Paul Kerschen's The Drowned Library is on sale now from Foxhead Books. Check it out here.

And have a look at Foxhead's trailer for Parker Fritz's photo-essay, In the Fall.

Not sure if this was published, so I'm splashing it out there.

2011-10-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

INDIGENOUS WISDOM KEEPER

They told me if I visited, asked too many questions, he’d kill me. I didn’t believe them.

He was the wisdom keeper in Carlyle County, and a woman was missing. I have duty to consider, as did Harry Trimble, who couldn’t be more dead. Three years this spring.

Carlyle’s wisdom keeper had one tooth. A front tooth. Larger than it should have been, not food worn, as most are, but still thick, as if this one tooth had just took over all the other teeth along the gumline. He was wrapped in a thin sheet when I sat down to talk, but removed it when I removed my campaign hat. It seemed every bone in his body pushed through to the skin and his eyes were fixed and glazed, full of pupil and without color. He looked worse than some bodies I’ve found.

He never entered his house. The day I saw him, he was on the front porch, just like they told me he’d be. Rusted nails and other fixtures I couldn’t place held wire screen in place around the porch. On the south end was his bed and the north end his photo album, which I never had the chance to see. It’s where I talked with him about Eve Redding, a young girl gone missing so long someone finally mentioned the wisdom keeper and got my interest up.

We talked for ten minutes. And in those ten minutes, the wisdom keeper prayed four times. He never entered the house. Not that day, and, as he said, not one day since Claudia gave him what I would call the burden, but the keeper called love. When he prayed, he prayed to Claudia.

She passed twelve years ago. What I would think were the strangest things, bothered him most of all, he said. The small things. A napkin used the morning before the afternoon she stopped smiling. A hair, curved like a cocked snake and stuck, once wet and now fixed, near the drain in the bathroom sink. It was too much pain to see those things now, he said. Too much hurt in a world already plenty hard enough.

For all those years he’d lived on the fringes of his home. The porch during warm months and a tool shed with a coal stove in the winter. Harry Trimble met with him in the month of April, as anyone interested can find on his tombstone.

There was an investigation, which I had no part in being new to the sheriff’s department then. The wisdom keeper watched the officers pick apart every inch of his property without emotion. Only when they entered the home did the sheriff and two others have to restrain him. Somewhere there’s a file at the station that details what was found in the house, but I didn’t read it before leaving. Hindsight being twenty twenty, and all that.

Eve Redding couldn’t be more dead, like Trimble. That’s what I learned at a price. Always a price. Claudia’s love was a powerful thing, the keeper’s burden a poisoned well of knowledge. My duty an albatross.

I’m sure there’s a file somewhere. Read it.

Harry Keeps Teaching Us

2011-10-13T03:24:00.000-07:00

That's what it should look like when you're writing your heart out, folks.

Just like that.

Fool's Gold

2011-10-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

Vapors. Stench.

Everlasting this and that, so obscure.

Items from a kinder past, youthful, clear and light of heart, simmer in the heat at the foot of the bed. Float in the air, dust mites alive still after twenty years. Tokens of achievement, a feeling gone from you, but tokens floating in that heat of now.

More clearly, a broken Babe Ruth League trophy, the bat held in the Bambino’s hands gone so it’s as if George Herman is praying sideways.

Vapors. Stench.

This in mind, a fake gold trophy found in a shithole room that was a place so magical a talking rabbit might have led you there, you turn the glass and it is the vapors simmering, moving, and the stench, not tokens.

Fool's gold.

Larry Brown Kept Writing. It Was That Simple And That Hard.

2011-10-04T07:03:00.000-07:00

Cloud To Ground

2011-10-03T02:38:00.000-07:00

(Written for my friends, Jereny and Amy Tackett, and published in Kudzu, Summer 2008)

Slabs of rain smack the windshield of Jim’s truck. It’s a surprise rain, no forecast, no warning, just slabs of rain dumped out from smudged clouds trying to beat dents and then trenches straight through the earth. Every second that passes, the earth might just give in under the pressure, lop open like a torn apart orange and stretch its lava choked throat wide enough to take in Jim, his truck and everything else.

Jim tries to concentrate on the radio, to take the curves in the road from memory until the clouds go calm, come together in the dark sky and spare the earth. Ten minutes and he would be home.

The radio. Rain, rain, rain. No lightning, no thunder. The radio. Jim’s truck pushing its grill into the storm, first at moderate speed and then recoiling, backing away to slower and slower speed. Jim praying or talking, singing with the radio under his breath. Seven minutes and he would be home.

In the dark sky, above the world-hating clouds, all is calm, the even darker calm of the stratosphere, the floating held breath of the near cosmos. The labor of Jim’s truck is lost in this place, the slicing of the tires across two inches of dirty water creeping across the potholed pavement, the strangled off gargling of the motor. None of that exists here. From here it’s easy to see the smudged clouds are still full, hardly a drop of their hatred spilled.

Below, Jim is unaware of the scene from the cosmos. He still sings with the radio, pushes through curves from memory, navigates down hills with his knees pulled up to the steering wheel, expecting the storm to ease. He has no way of knowing the storm will not pass, that his memory will fail him in twelve seconds and that his truck will fall into the partly opened mouth of the earth, the muddy cavity that will swallow him.

From the stratosphere there is the still moment just before a sound occurs, the squirming of clouds and then the banging together, smudge against smudge, the lurch and then the real storm, a final spilling of weight, and the first clear blue-white bolt of lightning. The forecast, had there been a forecast, would have called this cloud to ground lightning. It touches down in the front yard of Jim’s house, just beside the rose bush. His wife flinches from the front porch. She bounces in the porch swing, her fingers strapped to her lips, ignoring the spray of rain from the gutter. She rubs her arms, feels the cold skin with her fingernails, the electrical air pulling up the fine hairs from her wrist to the her elbow. The familiar scent of a storm from childhood, before marriage, before worry. Beneath that, she thinks she can smell burned rose petals. She has not started crying. She keeps her lips in place with her fingers and feeds herself with hope. Starving, she will cry soon.

The last raindrop trails behind a million others, but only by a second. Still, it will be the last to land, and it will land, unlike many of the others, on the spinning tire of Jim’s truck, sloughed onto its side into the ditch. The raindrop spins small within the inner rim of the wheel, rotates five times quickly and then is flung out to mix with the rushing waters of the ditch, swept away from inside the cab where the brown water is rippled red, the deep red of front yard roses blooming wetly from Jim’s nose, mouth, ears, eyes.

Another still moment above the clouds and then the first and final pounding of thunder, the wailing of the scorched universe, darkness swallowing darkness.

Foxhead Books Set To Publish My First Collection

2011-09-27T02:46:00.000-07:00

I received my contract for review from Foxhead Books yesterday evening. Foxhead will be publishing my full-length short story collection, The Same Terrible Storm, as of now and at some point later on my collection of flash stories, Where Alligators Sleep.

Needless to say I'll be signing that lovely thing. It's twenty-three years coming, this book, and I'm enjoying every moment of it.

In the meantime, have a look at Foxhead's first offering, Paul Kerschen's The Drowned Library. This collection will be available November 1, but visit the link and read a sample. I'm in extremely good company.

I'm Totally Down With Shelby Lee Adams. BOOM!

2011-09-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

I recently had the pleasure of an invite from photographer Shelby Lee Adams to visit Louisville and interview him and follow that up with a review of his latest book of photographs, "salt & truth".

This came about after Shelby Lee read an essay of mine published at PLUMB and included on his links page at his website. I was very much honored, to say the least. We've exchanged emails over the past few days and I feel I've found a kindred spirit who I already admired.

The link at Shelby Lee's website to the PLUMB post can be found here. It's just below the first of his many fine photographs.

Here's a song for you. You'll recognize the song and hopefully recognize the singer, and, if not, you gotta get on that. Enjoy.

I'm Better With Numbers

2011-09-23T03:43:00.000-07:00

Let me count the ways. Allow me that, and listen closely. Please.

One. Through and through, a blessed stone arrowhead beneath the tree root to the far end of the ridge.

Two. Miles suspended in all the water the earth offers while seconds, for once, gear down and step away, giving in. Just this once, in this life.

Three. While spinning in a ramble like a blackbird breaking the morning, even then, more then maybe. Never less. Dark-walking across those words, my fingertips chopping at the places where light once lived. Rambling with my heart slipped from shoulder to sleeve to palm.

Let me count the ways, and count and count and count. I'm better with numbers when your breathing can be heard.

Buddy Bolden's Blues and How Michael Ondaatje Caught That Magic

2011-09-20T15:09:00.000-07:00

Read Michael Ondaatje's COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER and read it now, people. Serious. Put things aside and read it. It's about the jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden, but, in wonderful Ondaatje fashion, it is fiction and reality and music and literature cocktail. Here's a sampling of Buddy's Blues:

Permanent Reminder

2011-09-12T02:42:00.000-07:00

I never saw a wild

thing sorry for itself

- D. H. Lawrence

Inked mirror-backwards across my heart so I can read it clearly every morning I wake is going to be sweet.

Warren Zevon Tells Us Things

2011-09-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

Amputated for the Obit

2011-09-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

They said it was congestive heart failure.

Don't whine.

They said pneumonia was a contributing factor. Fluid. Actually they didn't say anything. You found out in the papers. His face, serious, the edge of your twelve-year-old head just off to the side, amputated for the obit.

Cry me a river.

But you know the end was just a noble knight, a fellow soldier, pushing mercy through his chest by saber, by hook, by crook. But you know that was only the end. Death began years before and years to follow, self-inflicted wounds, stabs so subtle and kept in such secret no one noticed and no one cared. Until now.

The world's smallest fiddle.

One-Note Concert

2011-09-08T02:19:00.001-07:00

Good morning, said the coffee love across my teeth.

Here's something improv at 5:18 a.m.:

You are the one-note concert for a paying audience. You are informed and still at rest, worrying while action grins and rips away. You are cupid, string-tight and dangerous. Rain. A chill. The half-empty scaring the half-full in a room no bigger than a washtub.

And I remember this from when I was human (See also: a child), P.S. - There's a really awesome make-up commercial you'll want to watch before the classic video (not really):

Have a good day, even if it's for no other reason but to piss off those who would wish it differently.

Welcome, Nicolette Wong, to A-Minor Magazine!

2011-09-06T14:35:00.001-07:00

Oh, the joy of seeing something I feel to be fine and good come into the hands of a capable and talented writer! Nicolette Wong is going to do things with A-Minor Magazine hardly imagined, folks. Please do send your best, those of you lucky enough to have Nicolette's hand on your work. Trust me, you'll not be sorry.

When Nicolette agreed to take the helm at A-Minor, she didn't ask why I was stepping aside, and I loved that. She is an energetic and fresh voice and talent. I like the idea of A-Minor with a new captain, someone who brings a different eye to that world. I like it a lot. Visit A-Minor and see what's up, what's new and SUBMIT, SUBMIT, SUBMIT.

Thank you. Here's a song:

Inward (with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)

2011-09-03T04:47:00.000-07:00

Inwardly all seems well. A stalactite hangs grinning, dripping its name so slowly you can hardly hear it above the humming of electrical wires. This is no cave. This is no abandoned street. This is inward, and inward is none and all things.

"Stay," says the nameless speleoth. "You must."

But though inwardly all is dark and well, you know, I mean you truly know, this place is no place for a person.

"You are not a person," it lies.

Hands made into anvils and arms boneless so they are muscled-strong as dock rope you swing away, breaking apart generations of collected whispers until, inwardly, there is light and a path now growing beneath your feet.

There is a fruited tree ahead and you set your gaze and walk and then run and then sprint and then fly for every broken thing to see. Listen to their cries, weaker than before and for sure defeated.

Sounds Like a Breakup to Me

2011-09-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

By Heather McCoy

Silent’s kin keel

Yore absents hertz two thee corps

Eye knead ewe, mown four ewe, whale fore ewe

Half two halve ewe

Fill ewe inn ma sole

Yore cent inn habits thee steel heir

Theirs know lite win yore aweigh

Theirs know piece

Aisle knot heel

Ewe cowered, ewe lyre

Eye maid ewe!

Ewe suite, vial prints

Eye caird fore ewe

Eye dyed four ewe

Eye lade bee sighed ewe mini knights

Ewe war vales too hyde yore pane

Yore torcher

Yore tiers

Sari eye deed knot sea

Silent’s kin keel

Prize Fight

2011-09-01T02:33:00.000-07:00

Little water, they call it. It has properties and kick, remains in the head and soul upwards of two days. You have fought it and lost, won, came to a draw. Often and hard, you have judged the fight and thrown the punches, rang the bell and swept the trash when the world was empty. Silent as snow.

Music sounds different under that water, muted. Voices, too. And love, it suffers inwardly, unfamiliar with this kind of abuse. You recognize and retire into a brightness. Everything is concrete and random but important. Table, hat, kiss, touch, glass. Clear is the music and love lets go its suffering and you fight, ego strong.

ONCE UPON A CLICHE, Part 2

2011-08-31T16:29:00.000-07:00

By Heather McCoy

I was madder than a wet hen. My friends had pulled me out of the frying pan and into the fire. I could feel my blood boil. I'd had it up to here with their attempts to make me happy.

Sure, time heals all wounds, but I was perfectly happy sowing my wild oats. Besides, I could still feel the egg on my face from the last relationship I screwed up. And I had always heard that history repeats itself.

Once bitten, twice shy, I did all I could NOT to fall for him. I was used to walking on eggshells around a drunken man who talked with his fists. The more I watched him, guitar in hand, the more I realized I should just take the bull by the horns. I would jump in head first - no reservations, no fears.

But this man was too good to be true. He sang like a bird and stole my breath away. His eyes his body, his smell - they all just sweetened the pot. Love no longer seemed like an uphill battle. It was as warm and inviting as grandma's kitchen.

He was a kind man; the type of man that would give you the shirt off his back. He was a real man - a man's man, strong as on ox. He had skeletons in the closet, but so did I.

I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, and followed him out to the porch. "Hello," I mustered, tongue tied.

He took another draw from his cigarette, not missing a beat, before replying, "Hey."

I grew as water. It was time to sink or swim...

Now I look back on how I almost cut off my own nose to spite my face. He was nearly the one who got away. My dream man, my soul mate. I thank my lucky stars for my love and the twist of fate that brought us together.

***

Heather McCoy rocks it like a peanut butter famine (copyright Joey Goebel)

Play This When I'm Beneath the Stone

2011-08-31T03:12:00.000-07:00

ONCE UPON A CLICHE, Part 1

2011-08-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

By Heather McCoy

It was a dark and stormy night, raining like cats and dogs. There was lightning as far as the eye could see, and I had an axe to grind.

He was a bad seed, but I fell head over heels anyway. He danced to the beat of a different drummer; cold as ice and hot as a fox in a firestorm. His eyes looked straight through me. I grew weak in the knees and fell like a ton of bricks.

I had opened up a Pandora's Box, but I never take the path of least resistance. He came into my life, guns a'blazin and tore my heart out.

A Welfare Christmas

2011-08-28T13:02:00.001-07:00

This is not a test. Please understand this is not a test.

(yes it is)

News in Brief.

2011-04-01T09:54:00.001-07:00

I may be moving Bent Country to Wordpress soon. All things are not yet in order for that and I'm still trying to figure out some things. I want to make sure the old blog doesn't get lost in the shuffle for those who read it from time to time. But just saying. I might be looking for boxes soon. I guess, if the moves goes, I'll have a post here saying something like: "Hey, Bent Country is over HERE now" or something, and maybe the url for the new roosting place.

Misc.

2011-03-31T15:14:00.000-07:00

Thunderclap Magazine is out with Issue 5. They gave me love. It's late at work and I'm too tired to link (I know: Loserville: Population: Me). Anyways, Issue 5 is out and it rocks it like a slut in bad shoes. Buy it.

I'm currently working on trying to figure out a strange but small thing that occurred on Facebook earlier today. I'll never figure it out, and that's okay. That's the way things work. I'll eventually put it out of my mind.

On the more-self-promotion front, I also have work coming out soon from Moon Milk Review, Night Train and Connotation Press. Also Short, Fast, and Deadly as well as Fiction Collective accepted work from me today. Boom. I like people.

Potato cakes with bits of onion mixed in are good. Not good for my 1,200 cal diet with moderate exercise. But that just means extra working out. Okay.

Don't Drink and Write.

2011-03-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

I have little to say, which you will soon find out is a complete lie. I need to use the bathroom but I'm going to just hold it. It's like when you were young, maybe on the playground or at a birthday party, and you knew you needed to just go ahead and go, but no way was that happening. Miss a moment? No way.

So now that I have you thinking of how you probably need to use the bathroom, too. Let me just say that I've developed habits. Television, as I've mentioned here before, is one. It's an escape from reality. That's my real thrill. To be jettisoned away from this bad world and find another that has strict plot lines and developments that are not nearly as disastrous as those encountered in the real world. Oh, man....the REAL world. What a scary, scary place. No?

Of course I'm only joshing. The real world is a beautiful place. The sunshine beaming down on your face. The touch of a loved one. The sharing of stories among friends. The true feeling of accomplishment that comes with doing work that MEANS something. Really MEANS something. How can these things be replaced?

Better yet...how about telling me how these things feel. If they even exist at all.

I sent my boots to a boot person who fixes boots a week ago. When I gave them to him he said they would be ready (new leather soles, etc.) in two days. A week ago. That's seven days, I think. I wonder what my boots are doing right now while I wear these slimy Sketchers and wait for the return of real footwear? Are they sitting on a shelf somewhere wondering where I am? Probably. Jack Rear, I'm going to call him Jack Rear (copyright Joey Goebel). Jack Rear said he needed to order some piece of equipment to fix the boots with and that was the reason for the extended whateverthefuckitis. Well, I want my boots. Tomorrow, fixed or not, I will spring them from this boot-fixing prison and take them home. Half-done, not touched. It doesn't matter. I want my goddamn boots. And I will have them tomorrow.

Read a post earlier today about some lady who didn't like a review written about her book, which I think was self-published and is lame unless you're Walt Whitman or James Joyce and you're not, and laughed hard. I don't laugh often, so I was grateful to have this moment to get a good gut laugh in. My book is FINE! She said (exclaimed, yelled to convince herself, etc.). I just think it's wonderful. Roxane Gay the Great and Gorgeous posted about this at the GIANT. Thank you, Roxane Gay. You help make me laugh. Negative reviews? Give me all you can. I will eat them like oranges or apples with salt or watermelon, also with salt. I will drink them like black cherry whiskey. Reviews are just reviews. Opinions. If you're gonna get that worked up about a negative review, stop writing. Just fucking stop. Do something else. Plant corn. Build model airplanes. Get your own talk show. I forget the lady's name or I would have mentioned it. I'm glad I forgot it. She pissed me off.

Ah, the rambling I've indulged in these past few hundred words. It was silly, no? I hope so.

Keep it bent, folks.

Dang.

REVIEW: Redneck Poems by Rusty Barnes

2011-03-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not a poet. Wouldn't know a couplet from a coupling. It's why I rarely talk about books of poetry and even more rarely write poetry, but I felt a stout and strong urge to talk a bit about Rusty Barnes' REDNECK POEMS.

In this collection of fourteen poems, there is much to appreciated in as far as poetic device is concerned. I can recognize that much, but I'll go no further on that topic. Rusty moves as easily from poetry to short short fiction to longer works to editing the writing of others with equal ease and skill.

Here we're pulled into a world of hard people who by turns are aslo looking for nothing more than any of the rest of us – peace, companionship, redemption, and a healthy dose of risk in ultimately seeing these things obtained. At other turns, we're shown with a true Appalachian voice just how hard those edges can be, the misery that can come from falling against those edges as we traverse through the collection.

And at times, Rusty allows his characters to fail at the thing they most seek to obtain, as in "Hollywood Appalachian Noir: A Lesson".

In this poem, the narrator has decided to beat a guy's ass for more or less fucking with his woman, the sort of thing that spreads like wildfire in mountain towns, a virtual heat-seeking bomb of information that makes its way with record speed from the nursing home to the honky tonk.

"...I love my wife and Vaughan, /but with his sweat-thick hair and brandy snifter ways /like having a job and cold green in his pocket, /whiskey he doesn't have to color with tobacco /and
all the white teeth in sweet red gums /he didn't have to pay for on a plan but was born /with. All the teeth in the world won't save him."

And so our narrator makes his move, but there is no hero moment to be found.

"...Vaughan turns round /and strokes my jaw loose on its strings with his hard-/working fist. I am no hand at the arts of mayhem, I fear."

Then in a moment of near metafiction that Rusty manages to pull off without the usual pitfall of authorial intrusion we find the narrator is telling of this encounter after the fact to a cousin as a warning of sorts.

"Soon I am ass-over-teakettle and not even Patrick Swayze /can save me now. Vaughan kicks me into next week, /from which I write this verse. Cousin, don't mess with a /ridgerunner woman."

It's a poem that gives that clear picture of redemption or revenge perhaps that ends, instead, with failure and defeat and then wisdom as a result. And this told through a mix of both lyrical and regional tongue. A strong start for the collection as a whole.

Many of the remaining poems will often move back and forth between this lyrical and common style, but is strongest when we have that in-your-face and matter-of-fact tone such as in "Ode to ___________", where the second stanza starts with both an observation and then confession, all written with economy and that regional voice Rusty has tuned into so well. That voice and this poem is testimony to how clearly Rusty keeps his sense of regional identity in mind and how also well he is capable of sharing it on the page.

"A woman I barely know called /me cowboy tonight. I auto-denied /it; but she's right."

For the most part, the fourteen poems in REDNECK POEMS deal almost exclusively with relationships between men and women, with the exception of two that come immediately to mind – "Cutter" (a father and daughter) and "The Electric Fence" (a group of boys) – which, by contrast, may not fit the overall theme of the collection beyond the idea of relationships and the dynamics within those relationships, but remain powerful even as they stand apart in a collection this size.

At times in REDNECK POEMS, Rusty will write from the man's point of view and then twist his pen and write with spectacular skill from a female point of view as in "On a Miscarriage."

"Outside the piss-yellow moon fucked against the sky. /She thought of the children lost in the night by blood/and by accident and by God. The stars don't twinkle, /she thought. They stick up there out of pure love /or out of cussedness. All those dead babies up there, /she thought. They dare not fall to earth, ever ever again."

This is never an easy task for a writer, to get into the mind of the other gender and especially when tackling a subject such as this, but I feel it is by far the strongest, most honest and well-crafted poems Rusty offers in this collection.

For a chapbook that comes in at just under twenty pages total, Rusty has packed these poems with meat and bone, the hardness of the land and its people, and the heart and heartbreak at core of it all. It's a collection of poems I'll return to frequently just for the joy of a well-told moment in the lives of characters both complex and yet simple in the best ways, and also for the talent in craft that is evident in each line.

To get a look at REDNECK POEMS for yourself visit here where you can buy a print version for a fair and reasonable price or download the chap for free.

Time Management and Breaking My Word.

2011-03-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

Ah, hell.....too much going on at work today for me to finish up my thoughts on Rusty's fantabulous poetry. Sorry. It'll be up here soon though. Feel free to call me and expound on what a loser I am at time management and so on and so forth.

Remember, I love you all. Whatever love I have to offer after all my love has battled through, in whatever form from which to give, I give to you. And, yeah, dammit, I'll be giving it hell on REDNECK POEMS tomorrow. And of that you can be sure.

UPCOMING: Talking About Redneck Poems by Rusty Barnes

2011-03-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

I've now read Rusty's REDNECK POEMS and I'll be talking about it here tomorrow.

Until then, here is how I feel:

The Strong Survive. Yep. Maybe.

2011-03-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

This guy's name is James Justice and he, no joke, knocked a mule out once. He said he felt bad about it, but the mule was about to give him a good kick and he just reacted. I could tell he was being honest. He seemed genuinely remorseful about the incident, holding his head down while telling me about it. And he only told me the story after a friend of his insisted.

Oh, the hammer. Indeed.

Yeah, that's the largest sledgehammer in the world he's got there. It weighs 100 pounds. I lifted it to just about my shoulder and that was giving it everything I had. James hit that oak stump four good swings in about 20 seconds with it. Sometimes it is about strength.

The second largest, also in his possession, is a 60 pound beast. I did get a swing in with that one. Okay, I just bragged and made myself a little bit sick. I'll get over it. Besides, swinging it is not the hard part. The competition where they see who can swing the hammer X number of times in X minutes is the hard part.

This Whole Pseudonym Thing.

2011-03-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

Catherine Lacey, whose work I have to admit I've not had the opportunity to read other than posts here and there, shared this article about writing under a pen name a few days back called "Fear and Bravery of Pseudonyms". It sparked a bit of chatter, and I've been thinking about it, just hadn't written anything yet.

It'd be good to link to and read the article as well as the comment thread before continuing to read here. I'd recap, but the article and comments would be a more informative way of understanding the general thing itself and maybe also my final take on all of it. I left this as a comment on the thread as well. A rare thing for me, but anywho...

So anyways, here's my two cents:

I get the spark that started all this, to a point. But it's always the story itself that's most important. The very job of the writer is to step aside, drop behind the curtain and allow the reader to enter into a fictive world in which the hand of the writer is not seen. At least that's what I've read and been told. Who knows?

Point is, it's the story first and before all else. And I say this while withholding the fairly strong temptation to defend any other points made in relation to this post, especially the writer in question and others for that matter. I know it sounds simple, and as if I'm attempting to take this complicated and healthy debate and toss some water on it, but that's not the case. It's just that it's the work that matters.

Now, can I have my two cents back? I really kinda need it.

I'm Going To Try To Walk 20 Miles A Day...Not Really. That Would Be Crazy.

2011-03-17T11:38:00.001-07:00

I'm watching calories, trying to lose some weight. Walking three miles a day. Moderate exercise for now until it warms for good and I start back shooting basketball to burn some fat. It's about a quarter 'til 3 p.m. and I still have 780 calories to go before no more fuel for me today. I guess I'll tear into some supper at some point.

I'm trying to get back to my high school weight of 150 pounds by June. I'm at about 170 or so right now. Just tired lugging around the extra baggage, you know?

In some lit-related news, I'm at the table again editing for Metazen. Very happy about this and look forward to getting back into the swing of things at Frank's hangout.

I had a story called "On Eating, My Family" up yesterday at Eunoia Review. I was grateful they liked that story and published it.

My weekly post for PLUMB is up today. I write some about Hunter Thompson and share a video that shows HST doing his don't-back-down thing. Hope you get a chance to stop by and read it and catch up on any of the other posts that have went up there in the last couple of weeks.

I usually post about one story a month at Fictionaut, but this month I tossed two stories into the mix this month because I wanted to contribute to the new group, "What I Wanted". I've read a lot of good stories that came out of that group and felt like sharing what I could manage. Read that story, "1981, What I Wanted" here and the other "Courtship: Five Micros" here if you're so inclined.

Watch, Watch, Watch, or I Never Read Anymore

2011-03-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm Sheldon, and I'm a television addict.

Well, not really. I never watch television. Not exactly. The problem is I buy, borrow or "obtain" seasons of various series such as Deadwood, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, etc. and then watch them. Completely through. Entire seasons, often one after another if I have them. I break the trance only long enough to eat and tend to other necessary issues.

I once watched nine seasons of a show in this fashion. The world felt fake to me after it was all done. More than eighty hours of television. It fried something inside me. I felt it happening and did nothing to stop it.

All of these shows, and the many others I've not named, are on television. HBO, Showtime, FX, or something. I don't even know. So technically I'm addicted to television.

Okay, so there's that. Only thing is, it's getting bad. If I finish a season of a show, then I have to immediately have another show or another season of that same show on hand or things get bad. I shift around through the house touching walls, sitting in chairs and then getting back out of chairs. I pour coffee. I smoke. I think I might even shake a little, right in the tips of my fingers. I start the season I just finished over. Episode 1. Sometimes I watch it all again, but it's just not the same.

The basic theories are there. Escape from reality and so on. I cannot dispute these or discard them. I have to stare them in the eye. Am I avoiding reality by watching television shows every free minute of my life? This is the question I ask myself.

I refuse to answer. I touch walls. I lay on the bed and then get up from the bed. I feel feverish.

So this is my moment of confession. My testimony. At this point, at this time, given the option to read a book or watch a television show I'm really digging, I will always pick the television show.

This disgusts me just a little bit. I'm suppose to be a READER so I become a WRITER or a better WRITER. Or something like that. I know this because I've heard it a gazillion times: three rules to writing are 1) read, 2) read and 3) read.

Ah, hell. Nothing I can do about it. I'm weak. Willpowerless.

Thank you.

Some Things That Are Going On.

2011-03-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

I was a gastarbeiter at Marcus Speh's house Nothing To Flawnt. I shared a story there. What happens in the story is that people play cards. But it's about mortality and family and trust and admiration and the stuff. You know. I'm thankful to Marcus for having me over. My contribution was a story called "Full House Fall, Drop a Flush: A Half-Real Memory and Just a Story" and I hope you get the chance to have a look.

Robert Vaughn, writer and editor and a fine guy in general, currently hosts a program called Flash Fiction Friday on Milwaukee's Lake Effect at WUWM. It's a monthly show in which local authors can submit works of flash, 500 words or less, and normally they come into the studio and read their work. In this capacity, he selects a "national" author and reads a piece from them each month, as well. Robert has asked that I be his March national author and I happily agreed. As I understand it, he plans to read my story "Coming By It Honest", recently published in Blue Fifth Review. The live reading will be Friday, March 18, between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., but it will later be archived at WUWM. I'm more than pleased with this invitation, to say the least.

I'm scheduled to take part in a reading at the Theatre Square Marketplace on 651 4th Street in Louisville in May. I have about a 6-8 minute bit to fill and I'm trying to pick some interesting material. It's been organized by two fiercely talented writers, Teneice Delgado and Stacia Fleegal, both former classmates of mine and as good a people as you'll hope to meet. Still, I'm trying to figure out which of my stories to read. I'm thinking two or three flash pieces would fit the time slot. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I can never really get a pulse on the faults or strengths of my own work. It all seems fuzzy to me, like something I muttered in a fever-dream.

The new blog, PLUMB, for which I'm a contributing writer, is doing well. It seems a lot of folks are reading and stirring about it. And that's a great thing, a happy thing. I recently posted my first piece there about musician William Elliott Whitmore. If you've not visited the blog, I hope you can when possible. Eric Shaeffer at Legal Underground did and gave us a nod. Thanks for the mention, Eric Shaeffer.

These Mountains, These Words: Part 3

2011-03-08T12:05:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons Hemingway’s work endures is because of its unadorned prose and deeper levels of meaning. This is widely known. But like Breece Pancake’s stories, many of Hemingway’s, especially those from his first collection, In Our Time, have that specific Michigan woodland setting.

For Pancake, setting was paramount to his goals. The West Virginia mountains and coal mines and cornfields have a simplicity and hardness that is reflected in works such as “Trilobites,” “Hollow” and “The Honored Dead,” and are widely considered to be metaphorical reinventions of the characters that people Pancake’s stories, cornered by circumstance, existing amid, in spite of and in opposition to time and tradition, worn down, rounded and weathered, claustrophobic. Setting is the mirror at which each of Pancake’s characters stand, evaluating themselves in uncomplicated terms through what can very often be complicated situations. Everything Pancake achieves through setting as metaphor and as a character in its own right, lends itself to his overall style and approach of forcing himself to disappear into that landscape, into the language, allowing these elements to take center stage alongside his characters.

The short story, “Hollow,” opens with the main character, Buddy, working in the coal mine. The description is pared down, but powerful, and lets the reader know right away that setting is of great importance.

"Hunched on his knees in the three-foot seam, Buddy was lost in the rhythm of the truck mine’s relay; the glitter of coal and sandstone in his cap light, the setting and lifting and pouring. This was nothing like the real mine, no deep tunnels or mantrips, only the setting, lifting, pouring, only the light-flash from caps in the relay."

Here we have the notion and theme of being closed in, trapped, which is a common and underlying feeling among many Appalachians. The rolling mountains stand ancient and immovable at every corner, at every sharp curve in the road, a 280 million-year old reminder of limitations, the perpetual life -- work, eat, sleep -- and forever these basic things, with the surrounding valleys and ridges little more than long-vegetated prison walls to either be scaled or fretted over. This mentality can be found throughout Appalachia, haunting its residents and given voice through Pancake’s characters.

In his hometown of Milton, West Virginia, one of Pancake’s childhood friends, Robert Jackson, was interviewed as part of the same National Public Radio profile for which McPherson had offered his comments. Jackson, echoing Vonnegut’s comments to Casey concerning Pancake’s suicide, offered his opinion and spoke briefly about a key theme underscoring much of Pancake’s work, that of escaping both place and limitation.

"You know who I am in the book? I’m Chester the Shithouse Mouse, the one who got out. I got through life a lot easier than Breece did. Probably because I wasn’t as smart. I chose to compromise a lot more than Breece did. Breece was not going to compromise what he knew was the right, true, good way and there was only one way for Breece. And we all know that as we mature if we are going to live a halfway normal life that there are compromises that you make along the way to make life a little more simple."

Jackson’s mention of the “The Salvation of Me” character Chester is telling as it illuminates the duel sense of envy and disgust at those who managed to escape the confines of the mountains. Character would also become a primary avenue through which Pancake would erase himself and bring a more pure story to the page. But, in the beginning, at least, it was setting, his West Virginia, that would guide the young college student on his path to literary stardom. Returning to the short story “Trilobites,” which McPherson claims to be his favorite because it shows clearly the mutual relationship between the landscape and nature, Pancake takes us even further into the structure of his mountain world, beneath even the layered social structure of West Virginia, below the coal mine and the bars.

In this story Pancake introduces arguably his strongest brushstroke of setting, the ancient claim that holds his homeland, the fossils that float forever under the weight of the world’s oldest mountain range. In this image Pancake tosses aside any flare for words the lesser writer might have relied upon and drives home theme in an efficient way, combining the idea of history and the trappings that can develop from that particular land’s history. Inside the guts of the mountains are trilobites, arrowheads, and other items from another time that speak to the reader of Pancake’s work today, no matter where they may call home. Loneliness, desperation and insurmountable odds are not exclusive to the people of Appalachia, only highlighted along its ridges like cracks in a coal seam. The imagery speaks volumes while the writer only presents the case and steps aside, allowing this idea, this power, to take hold in its own right.

In “Trilobites,” Pancake uses this prehistoric marine creature as a metaphorical equivalent to the story’s main character, Colly, smothered beneath the pressure of the mountains and the expectations of his widowed mother to take up the responsibilities his dead father left in the form of a farm that needs tended. Colly’s frustrations, the tug and pull of his sense of purpose against his desire for something better, is the emotional centerpiece of the story and achieved through the character’s inner thoughts and the means by which they shadow that of the land itself. In the following passage, Colly’s inner struggle is made real for the reader through his description of the fields his father worked so hard to maintain. He’s pulled the old tractor from its place and driven out to the field.

"I sit there, smoke, look again at the cane. The rows curve tight, but around them is a sort of scar of clay, and the leaves have a purplish blight. I don’t wonder about the blight. I know the cane is too far gone to worry about the blight. Far off, somebody chops wood, and the ax-bites echo back to me. The hillsides are baked here and have heat ghosts. Our cattle move to the wind gap, and the birds hide in caps of trees where we never cut the timber for pasture. I look at the wrinkly old boundary post. Pop set it when the hobo and soldier days were over. It is a locust-tree post and it will be there a long time. A few dead morning glories cling to it."

The setting is telling the story for the author in this passage. The careful and economical use of words such as “ghosts” and “dead” to describe the heat and morning glories all echo to the reader the underlying tension of picking up where his father left off after dying. Also the reference to the boundary post and how long it will last and continue to be there on the land works to express Colly’s inner, if common, wish that his father were still alive. We are left to wonder to what extent Colly wishes this so as to ease himself of the burdens that were left to him after his father’s death and what portion of this is simple sadness for the loss of a loved one. All of this complexity from what appears a simple descriptive passage. Also, the key description of setting in the passage, the mention of the blight on the cane and how it was too far gone to be concerned with adds theme to the mix. All this detail within such a small space does not happen accidentally, any writer knows this, and works each session either making it to this level or failing. For Pancake, hard work was a tradition brought from the mountains and a way of life he carried over into his day to day efforts as a writer.

Old Dogs and New Tricks

2011-03-07T11:10:00.000-08:00

I have no agenda in writing this post. This is to say, it's very likely those few of you who actually come to read it will have left by the time I finish this sentence.

Okay, those of you still here. What I said was true. I have nothing significant or intelligent or insightful to say. I have no analysis of anything social, literary, historical or philosophical to say or comment on.

I am drinking a cup of coffee. I am sitting in front of my desk at work. There is a heater, one of those floor heaters given to me by an former co-worker who was fired about a month ago, at my feet. Well, it's actually aimed a bit more north. Nice and warm. See...this means nothing.

I'm freelancing a job right now. A ten-page paper about a guy who was a teacher here in East Ky. back in the 1920s and it's getting the best of me. Only thing is, the guy paid me half up front. So. Pressure = no results for me, at least as far as writing goes. However, I've managed to bang out about half the pages today, this morning and afternoon. So I'm feeling better about that. I care about that. You do not. It's cool.

I'm drinking coffee. It's the second round. I had a pot of coffee this morning and now I'm having a few cups this afternoon. Cops are hateful around here. Hall monitors. Tax collectors. They get really snippy and will have you reciting the alphabet backwards before you can say "DICKS" and shield yourself from being Tased. The coffee will come through for me. It always does.

I have the flu or pneumonia or something. I don't visit doctors or lawyers and avoid police officers whenever I can, so I can only guess. But it feels like flu. If I seem paranoid, it's because I am. Open your eyes, folks. Paranoid = prepped. What's the other option? Blindly accepting and then side-swiped and crying for the mercy of the court. I've been in court. There is no mercy. Only agendas, and people who know people. I know people, but not the kind of people who can help in those situations.

I once spent a night in jail because me and a friend of mine stopped on an overpass and he grabbed a road cone. Blue lights. Sobriety test. Jail. Phone call. Hung up on my ass. Spent the night. Come morning, I'm handcuffed chain-style to about a dozen other guys and sitting in a court room pleading not guilty, even though the cop saw us take the cone, had pulled in behind us and watched the cone be taken from the roadside. I pleaded not guilty and looked at the tax collecting hall monitor and almost...ALMOST....felt bad. I mean, he saw it happen.

How did that turn out? Well, I'm here, at work, pecking away at this post and not rolling cigs from packs of Bugler tobacco and trading my coffee and hairy biscuits for a smoke with a freakin filter. So, things turned out okay. Or whatever.

I'll be writing my first post for PLUMB, the new lit blog, that will appear on Wednesday, I think. I've been knocking around some ideas. Though equipped with two degrees, including a masters degree (don't ask how that happened) I'm not much for elevated discussion about the theory of theory or this and that or the line breaks of Ezra Pound or the muscular prose of Hemingway or the screw-story-concentrate-on-style approach of Joyce and Stein. I don't know what I'm about.

I guess I'm about story.

Where I'm from nothing is just told to another person fact by fact. It's always told in a story. There's the whole set up. Introduction, background, rising action, climax, etc, etc. All of that's important, I'm just saying. I tell stories, so my post will probably feel more like a story than a lecture or a suggestion or anything else for that matter. But listen closely and you'll find that inside that story is what I'm really trying to say. Too much work? I agree. I've always agreed. But old dogs and new tricks. You know how it is.

March Just Got A Little More Ramshackle Review!

2011-03-02T08:32:00.000-08:00

Ramshackle Review 3 is packed, including a story of mine called "Outside Eddie's Room In the World". Seriously, I'm linking to my story, but just have a look at this entire issue. It's packed. Capital P.

I wrote something earlier this morning and posted it at Fictionaut. It's called "Courtship: Five Micros" and you can go there and have a look or read below, as I'll post it here as well.

Here's "Courtship". The accompanying photo is by Chloe Cheng.

Courtship: Five Micros

The Old Roses

The old roses came from Ma Trent. The velvet rose I can't remember, but it's a rare one. Maybe he brought it the day he first came to visit with the silly hat, the day my brother said he seemed nice for a guy with big ears.

Tell Me About Her Hazel Eyes

They changed the way you know eyes that color will. Blue, green, blue, green. And it all depended on things like the sunlight or a cold room. Brown even, sometimes. Not often, though. Brown depended on my doing something stupid, and I'm a quick study.

Five

Four children are left. One is dead. He could not be any more dead. And he made it through the war only to come back and die alone in a strange room. But they remember him the day he left for Korea. "You see this hand? This hand and the rest of me will look the same the next time you see me." That's what the fifth, the second oldest, said before he left for overseas. And she still sees him the day he came back, his hair cut perfect so that every black strand curved across his head like a halo bending in the darkness.

Like a Fairy Tale

He's a nice guy for somebody with big ears and that dandy hat sitting on his head like a rooster. She tossed a soapy dish towel at him. Don't say things like that, Son. But he was nice and the hat was a bad one. Maybe their first morning together it would call them awake and then just flop away forever after.

In the Dark

Poppy called me his baby and it embarrassed me then, but now I can see how sweet it was for him to do that. So we'd go to the porch for privacy and have coffee. Out there with him, my dress pulled tight at my knees, we couldn't see too far from the porch, it being well past dusk and full dark. But neither of us tried very hard, either. And good for us, knowing now everything yet out of sight.

Blue Plumb Banshees

2011-02-28T08:11:00.001-08:00

My story "Coming By It Honest" is up today at Blue Fifth Review. Thanks to the Blue folk for working this story into something better than it was when first they laid eyes on it.

Southern scribe Charles Dodd White has extended a most kind invitation to me to become a contributor for a new web destination called Plumb. This will be exciting, and Charles already has several talented contributors lined up. Stay tuned.

Editors and readers...go nominate stories for storySouth's 2011 Million Writers Award over at Jason Sanford's house or the banshees will forever crowd your grave.

These Mountains, These Words: Part 2

2011-02-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

In Pancake's short story, “Trilobites,” the main character, Colley, is struggling to come to terms with the fact that he will not be able to take care of dead father’s farm. The land and his inability to work it weighs heavily on the young character, trapping him and intriguing him at the same time, and comes to the forefront through vivid descriptions of that confining landscape. Fittingly, the story opens with one of Pancake’s favorite characters – West Virginia.

"I open the truck’s door, step on to the brick side street. I look at Company Hill again, all sort of worn down and round. A long time ago it was real craggy and stood like an island in the Teays River. It took over a million years to make that smooth little hill, and I’ve looked all over it for trilobites. I think how it has always been there and always will be, at least east for as long as it matters. The air is smoky with summertime. A bunch of starlings swim over me. I was born in this country and have never much wanted to leave."

Like the mountains he worked so hard to portray in his work, Pancake’s approach in style is simple, but his message is vital, vital enough that he felt it important to make room for it and his language and remove what might be referred to as lyrical language or, the less distinguished term, purple prose, from his efforts altogether. This is a style often criticized and rarely used properly or with much success. Often, the result is the too clear image for the reader of the writer poised at the keyboard working words into sentences to make paragraphs, the tangible product of that diligent and talented writer at work that many authors hope to show to the world to redeem themselves, the effort and their profession. Most of the time this can be as disruptive to the reader as a mechanic at their elbows, clanging and scraping away at a hateful transmission or dented fender. Much of what is considered good or even great writing employs this ornate style. Two good examples can be found in the works of Michael Ondaajte and Tom Robbins. This approach is one of metafiction at its best -- language for language’s sake. However, and particularly in Ondaatje’s case, this style is central to the theme, as in his novel, Coming Through Slaughter, about the life and death of jazz innovator Buddy Bolden. The book chronicles his genius, his breakdown and the complex world of his music. The language and structure of the book is pitch-perfect in telling this story, its rambling and wild images and lyrical strangeness and shifts in point of view, all of which are reflections of techniques used in creating the improvised jazz sound Bolden helped create and which led to his untimely death. Likewise, as in the following passage, this style also works to establish the split lives of those who suffer from depression, as did Bolden:

"He’s mixing them up. He’s playing the blues and the hymn sadder than the blues and then the blues sadder than the hymn. That is the first time I ever heard hymns and blues cooked up together…It sounded like a battle between the Good Lord and the Devil. Something tells me to listen and see who wins. If Bolden stops on the hymn, the Good Lord wins. If he stops on the blues, the Devil wins."

In this passage, we have less ornate language as are predominate in earlier passages, but we have the highest level of imagery at play and the even the plain language of the old black man watching and listening to Bolden playing the cornet from across the street has a certain poetic quality. In this case, it works for the purposes of the overall theme of the novel. But in most cases, lofty imagery and flowery writing is hardly put to such hard work.

The urge to create something on the page that reflects back on the talents of the writer and his ability is not only overwhelming, for many young writers, it can be hard to understand any other reason for sitting down to work. The beginning writer might hear from friends who have just read the latest work questions about the language. For the casual reader, this is the most important point, the words used, the arrangement of sentences, even if the reader is not clear on how often they place importance on this single aspect of literature. But then, isn’t the whole point to impress the reader, to render them speechless with amazing works of literature? Maybe so, but the true writer, as Pancake may have felt, seeks to bury deep within the reader’s heart, not just with language, but with that which is being shared, the underlying meaning that hopes to find a home in the hearts of kindred spirits. Perhaps astounding the reader with vivid and amazing language is the widely held view on the subject, but the argument stands -- what does the writer risk in sticking to this idea? In the case of Tom Robbins, an indisputable master of the craft, the risk could be the loss of the very subject of the work itself in the amazing wake of his own words and expertise. Take for instance this imaginative and impressive description of Leonard Cohen from Robbins’ liner notes for the 1995 release of Cohen’s tribute album, Tower of Song:

"It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher’s stone. A voice marinated in kirshwasser, sulfur, deer musk, and snow; bandaged with sackcloth from a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone."

Beautiful, there’s no doubt. Enviable, to say the least. The beginning writer, any writer worth his weight in copy paper for that matter, cannot help but stop after reading this description and envy Robbins’ skill, his turn of phrase and command. Robbins himself likely stood up from his desk after finishing this sentence and took a deep breath, realizing he had captured that most desired of game for the working author, that magic moment when everything in his chest of tools worked in perfect harmony. But does this passage and the rest of the notes included in this 1995 tribute album, which are no less brilliantly written, really pay specific and focused tribute to Leonard Cohen? It is Robbins’ mastery of language we think of after reading, most likely, and Cohen as hardly more than the scruffy canvas on which it was expertly played out. Losing focus of his subject or subjects is something Breece Pancake could never be accused of, and this itself is an achievement in literature found in few other places. Perhaps one of the most notable of places this can be seen is in the works of Ernest Hemingway. Joyce Carol Oates wrote that she was “tempted” to compare Pancake to Hemingway in her New York Times review of his posthumous 1983 collection.

These Mountains, These Words: Part 1

2011-02-24T07:34:00.000-08:00

The following is the introductory first section of an extended critical essay I wrote on the life and writings of Breece D'J Pancake. I may post additional sections here as a series of sorts because the essay is lengthy and there's no need to be long-winded all in one day. Better to let the air out a bit at at a time. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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These Mountains, These Words:
The Selfless Writings of Breece D’J Pancake

On April 8, 1979, graduate student Breece Pancake walked into his backyard in Charlottesville, Virginia, sat beneath an apple tree, put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

He was 26 years old.

The act gave birth to perhaps one of the more enduring mysteries the world of literature has yet provided, and left many to speculate and question, search for answers. In an August 2002 letter to John Casey, Pancake’s former teacher, famed writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “I give you my word of honor that he is simply the best writer, the most sincere writer I’ve ever read. What I suspect is that it hurt too much, was no fun at all to be that good. You and I will never know.”

The aftermath was a strange one. His teachers and his mother, Helen, worked tirelessly over the course of the next four years compiling his body of work, which consisted exclusively of neatly trimmed short stories, into a collection which was then shopped around until published in 1983. The morbid stigma surrounding the publication was the subject of much discussion. This young man had killed himself on the verge of an astounding literary career. Critics, even those who joined in, were quick to give any praise heaped on the finished collection a skeptical eye, conjuring references to the posthumous publication of John Kennedy O’ Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces as a possible catalyst toward a trend of holding tortured artist in perhaps too high regard based solely on the circumstances surround their early death. But Pancake’s work withstood the speculation, even if the reasons for his suicide did not.

Pancake’s work, his style, was not complicated, writer Andre Dubus III summarized it in three words: “subject, verb, object." Like the hard, grainy surface of a rough-cut kitchen table, his words are oak, slammed with elbows and dream-talk and love and hard-won food, desire and hope, family and perseverance. But could this power and control of language sustain nearly thirty years of interest in his work? Having only three short stories published before his death and, four years later, a single, Pulitzer-nominated collection simply titled The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, how did this young West Virginia son make such an impact? The answer could be found in the West Virginia native’s ability to remove himself, the young and talented writer at work, from the written page.

Just as he left friends, family and colleagues in 1979, disappearing and taking with him the stories yet to be written, Pancake’s prose leaves not a single trace of selfish pride behind, that sentence slapped on the page as a self-presented badge of honor, written for no other purpose but to exclaim one’s own personal talent. Each word found on any page of any story in Pancake’s body of work is performing a single function – to serve the characters who are pushing and climbing and struggling stubbornly through to find their own destinies. Across this temporal scope there is no intrusiveness, no vanity to Pancake’s words. The power of his art is not in service to anyone other than Colley, Enoch, Harry, Alena, Buddy or any of the other characters who speak to us through Pancake’s pen. Each sentence has an understood majesty, like the sloping hills and ridges of the Appalachian Mountains of which they tell, rounded and simple, beaten down to reveal shale-bone against an unpretentious blue summer sky, but full of the richness of history, fossils and the mined out black strips of long-dead giants trapped beneath that beauty.

CMT's 100 Best Drinking Songs Countdown As Viewed By A Bad Poet Six Years Ago

2011-02-23T12:01:00.000-08:00

I thought to drink some tonight.

No ride.
Instead I flipped channels
and stopped on country music.
I caught my wrist,
or my wrist caught me,
or we both forgot that corn
was the best bait for catching trout,
and I stopped
and watched part of the
best drinking songs countdown.
Number 24,
What Made Milwaukee Famous,
Jerry Lee Lewis.
The next one,
Number 23,
Wine Into Water,
T. Graham Brown.
some guy said it made him cry.
I flip the channel after Brown drops the ball
and Lewis takes a back seat
or takes a side seat and a front seat
and the only thing left was a back seat
with bucket seats
and memories or regrets
and young cousins and beer.
Either way,
the Killer moved on.

Jesus On A Tractor Trailer

2011-02-22T10:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I lied about being away for awhile. Here's a picture I took on Town Mountain Road in the County of Floyd about five years ago. It's a painting on the side of an abandoned tractor trailer once used to move who knows what, lumber furniture, etc. Anyways, the bible belt, you know? Here's part of the buckle.

Boogie Woogie For Now.

2011-02-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

I'll be writing for awhile. See you on the other side of the side, you know, around the corner, beside the piano where we played boogie woogie, you the left hand and I the right. See you there soon.

The Open Wound or The Raw Nerve

2011-02-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

Writer Nicolette Wong, a talent you should have a look at, wrote recently of being sick at heart. Three words that stirred me to the keyboard, stirred my mind, the gray stuff beneath my skull running amok twisting those three words like a long strand of hair hanging over my serious brow and between nervous fingers.

Sick at heart.

It's dark and beautiful, no? And true. And beautiful.

Tolstoy wrote that writers, artists, creative people, people sensitive to the emotions and feelings flowing in waves across the world, suffered from "a great wound." I've always thought of it as a raw nerve, jerking up through the layers of skin in, say, a forearm and doused with rubbing alcohol, jerking in the strange air, pain its only purpose.

I know why I think this. One evening, about dusk, I visited a friend's house. Between us, ages added together, we were still less than twenty-five. Young boys. I wanted him to go riding bikes or the such. A body shop did his dad own, and this is where I found him, pushing with a retracting blade to skin loose the hood decoration of a T-Bird, that large bird of lore remembered perhaps from the Smokey and the Bandit movie from those days before the world changed.

But he was working to get this bird off the hood. And I helped. I'll not bore with other details, but my friend, striking toward himself, cut a three inch long gash and a half inch deep cut in his forearm.

I saw the yellow vein pushing up through the skin. We walked calmly to his grandmother's house where she opened a bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured the contents onto his forearm. The nerve, that yellow string of life, jerked and pushed against the sides of the severed skin. My friend, a strong boy and a strong man now today, never cried.

He told me years later he would have cried if I had not been there, standing on the porch when the remedy was administered.

Like my friend, those of us with creative tendencies cry inwardly, dripping it onto the page or the canvas or into the hollow insides of a saxophone. We hide our pain while telling the world everything we know about it.

Two Fictional Cover Letters I Wish I Would Have Sent

2011-02-16T07:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Hazeltap Vintagepoke,

I rarely read. I can’t concentrate very well when I try, and I have very little time for such indulgence. I’m surprised I even have time to write you today. I have been monitoring a friend of mine for the past week. He is close to perfecting the ability to turn into a werewolf. Progress has been slow but he’s trying very hard and I am supportive. I’m sure it will happen any night now and I want to be there for the transformation. He has agreed that if he still has the capacity to comprehend good and evil to spare my life and bolt into the nearby hills instead of clawing and biting me into pieces. This is awfully big of him, I think.

But as I was saying I don’t get a great deal of time to read so I’ve not seen anything published in your magazine. No worries. I am adroit and have excellent reflexes and can adjust to things easily. I picked up this ability while learning to climb cliffs along the Appalachian Mountain Range. There is a cluster of cliffs just across the street from my home and I have climbed them dozens and dozens of times. The skills I have acquired from this activity I believe go without saying.

In closing I will say your magazine was chosen at random following a hat drawing that took place at a community park near my house called the Long Fork Community Park. I wrote the names of numerous magazines on small slips of paper and asked someone to pull one from the hat. Your magazine was the cream, the one. I was happy for this for no real reason I can rightly explain.

Thanks in advance,
Sheldon Lee Compton

–––

Dear Joseph Hottentotter,

I have a story for you to consider, but first there's something I must say. I’m melancholy tonight. Also, in our various meetings about what work might fit best for your magazine, I recall things, funny statements flung from you to me and now back to you and anyone else who accidentally reads this.

#1: Phil Spector looks like he has a tumbleweed on his head.

#2: Someone else take care of every problem I have.

#3 (A portion of conversation as the lunch hour approached):

Me: How about Billy Ray’s?
You: What kind of stuff do they have there?
Me: I don’t know. Like open face roast beef sandwiches. Things like that.
You: What kind of satchels do they give you with the meals?

#4: He can’t help his face. (This said after hearing criticism about Clint Eastwood seeming a parody of himself in Gran Turino).

#5 (An exchange about the merits of St. Patrick’s Day):
You: He chased snakes out of Ireland.
Me: That’s cool.
You: It’s also impossible.

Thanks for the consideration,
Shel

Strange Meals and Memories To Share.

2011-02-10T14:35:00.000-08:00

I watched a girl eat worms once. I wrote a story about it called "Playing" which can be found at the PUBLISHED WORKS links to the left of this post. But, here's the thing. I watched a girl do this. And not only this. She also placed a thick and snotty slug, I want to say about half a foot long, around her next. A necklace of slug, boneless and clutching.

It stuck, and stuck hard. My aunts and uncles and cousins and parent came to her aid, pulling the die-hard creature from this place where it had found warmth from a jugular vein it knew nothing about.

For weeks after this happened she had a dark mark around her neck, the mark of that slug, that hell-bent slug, its intentions tattooed around her, a mark.

But the dark trail left eventually and she moved on, began eating pennies and nickels and quarters. I never asked her to do this, only watched. I never cheered and encouraged. Only watched, aware that something was taking place that would stay with me. And here it has stayed and now been shared. For what it's worth, been shared.

You Imagine They Understand Every Word

2011-02-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

You did not attend AWP, the gathering of all things writing and writers and write. This bothered you until you came across photographs from the gala. Crowds of people, elbow to elbow, birds on wires, saved only by flight from ground shock and death. People, crowds, reading, talking in time frames akin to the elderly and the way they nap. Here for a moment and then asleep again, then awake. Repeat.

In college, when you could have attended without paying fees, etc., you stayed in the hills as well. Trapped or protected. You were never sure. But you listened to stories during next residency and the one after that. And the talk of writing about the talk of writing wore you to a nub, a stalagmite formed in drops dating back to the boiling sea, you standing with your mouth moving and your drawl dropping all across people's faces, hanging from their ears.

Every fourth or fifth word, you figured. That's about what they ever understood of your twanged words, thrown out with auctioneer-speed. It was best when they talked and you could nod and stare pensively, whichever the comment called for or demanded.

Still, some part of you enjoyed the stories, enjoyed the evenings in the lobby of the Brown Hotel in Louisville with your classmates, enjoyed, and still enjoy, talk of writing and writers and write. It could be called back to watching mechanics at the coal truck garage across from your old homeplace trading theories on how to best fix this or a new idea of where to put this piece to lose the rattle and on and on. It was talk of craft, the building or fixing of things with people who spoke the language, understood the work.

So you think of AWP and a reading here or there, a chance meeting with someone whose work you have admired from afar. You make up a story in your mind about shaking that person's hand and concentrating on speaking s-l-o-w-l-y so the drawl doesn't drown them. And you imagine in this made-up story that you understand every word they said.

I Don't Have a Good Title For This. Too Much Pressure.

2011-02-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

Submissions have opened back up at A-Minor and I thought it might be cool to give some preview of some of the folks who will be appearing there over the course of the next several weeks.

At this point in February I'll have work coming up from Barry Basden, Dorothee Lang, Howie Good and Foster Trescot.

Filling out March will be Elliot Andreopoulos, Susan Tepper, Jason Lee Norman and Meg Tuite. April is booked as well, but I'll leave a little to the imagination.

Some suggestions:

• Watch the movie Winter's Bone.

• Listen to the song "Sway" by Heartless Bastards.

• Read anything and everything all the time, but read Darryl Price's poem "Against the V" up now at Fictionaut as soon as you can.

• Write. Even if it's not worth much of a damn. Write, as long as your body says to do so in the same way it demands you breathe.

Sort of wish I was in Washington, D.C., but then I remind myself that I'm only a hellbilly and I'd probably just end up slurring incoherent nothings to anyone in earshot. And if you think a East Kentucky accent is tough to follow, try tagging along after a few shots of the red stuff.

Live Nude Poems: Live Nude Poems--New Draft, and Bourbon Penn Arrives

2011-02-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

Live Nude Poems: Live Nude Poem--New Draft

Rusty Barnes has penned one of the coolest poems I've read on the subject of death in a great long time. Follow the link above and enjoy.

Also this is a new lit mag I'm excited about. Ryder Collins rocks some awesome words in the first issue along with a host of others. Check it.

I Wish I Had Two Different Colored Eyes

2011-02-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

Please do yourself a favor and order Normally Special, xTx's new book from Tiny Hardcore Press. Order this, or sit alone at the lunch table. Sorry, but that's the way it goes. When something's good you gotta be there.

Pank tells us that Hot Metal Bridge is looking for submissions. Send something, please.

Mr. Jeff Callico, founder and editor of Negative Suck has started another zine called Dark Chaos. Read more here at the Fictionaut interview. Best of luck JC!

Howie Good currently has a fine poem up at Juked.

It's February and that means Jason Jordan just walked through the door with a new issue of decomP. Always the good goods.

I've enjoyed elimae from outside the window for a long while. I looked through it again today and found this trio of flash pieces called "10,000 Dollar Pyramid" from Robert Vaughan. Favorite line: "During the course of her life Cleo screwed every single President."

Jeffrey Miller, author of WAR REMAINS and a solid chap, is happy.

Dark Sky Magazine published my story "The Shiniest Shoes in the Graveyard" today. Again with the happy.

Outside Eddie's Room In the World

2011-01-31T07:40:00.000-08:00

Eddie combed the doll's hair. Then another and another. Many dolls, all told. More than he could count. He looked at the room of family photographs hanging on walls and leaning in corners while he combed.

Some he knew, recognized from the slant of eye or the dip of shoulder, others he did not. A man cocked against a company truck. Hair slick, morning fog climbing down from the mountains behind him to swallow him. Another done professional of Eve and her family, the boy and the girl who died three years back.

Drove into town at midday and didn't come back. Deputy Calhoun found both of them behind the old Hobbs store with blue powder hanging from their noses like early morning icicles.

It was Eddie who tried to explain to Granny Barb what happened. He used words like "pills" and "snort" and "plague." Granny Barb said she took medicine but it never left her dead like her sweet grandbabies. Eddie stopped trying and Eve and her husband R.B. just never tried. They left Granny Barb to soak in her own confusion and pain while they plagued themselves long enough to forget why it mattered to start with.

Eddie stacked one patch of dolls into another corner. He tucked the comb in his back pocket and eased into his recliner. Nearly dozed off, his hand-held scanner blared out in the quiet. Static in heartbeats and then the cops talking in numbers. He listened for names in between the numbers. He knew most of the codes. He knew the codes for fatal wrecks and overdoses, gunshots fired and so on. It was a rock slide on Creed Hill blocking traffic. Nothing much happening this morning. Maybe later today.

Every doll had a name. Eddie named one for every family member gone. More dolls than he could count. Counting slaughtered sheep. But he tried, and finally went back to sleep in his chair, one ear cocked for static and numbers and the plague, always there somewhere outside his room. In the world.

PHOTO BY SHELBY LEE ADAMS

Lists, Waves and Smiles, Monkeybicycle and Border Towns

2011-01-28T10:36:00.000-08:00

Ravi Mangla made a list of Wigleaf stories, not eligible for inclusion in the Wig's Top 50 for obvious reasons, because Ravi makes lists. This is a good one. Work from Amber Sparks, Jim Heynen, Anne Valente, Mel Bosworth, Steve Himmer and truck loads of others.

Waving and smiling, Martha Williams also made a list. I'm addicted to lists. Martha listed up some blogs for folks to read and some journals for folks to read. I think she's right, right and right. And I thank her from the bottom of my bottle for including A-Minor and Bent Country on that list. Writers include Michelle Elvy, Christopher Allen, Kirsty Logan, Sam Rasnake, Robert Vaughn, Claire King, and all the others good stuff waving Martha's way and waved by to us like wind magic as pixie dust. Journals deservedly dropped into the list include Ramon Collins' The Linnets Wings, Metazen, The Pistol Mice (formerly BLIP and formerly before that other things), and some I've not yet read but will soon.

Go take a ride on Monkeybicycle, okay? It's a nice ride today and here is the permanent link to a group of the one-sentence stories they have up there today. One ultra-fast awesomeness from Donora Hillard, Len Kuntz, Brad Modlin, Bruce Harris and varying other ninjas of the one-sentence form. Reading this reminded me again of the maybe the most important rule in writing micro or mini-micro stories. Titles are everything in this form. Everything.

There are more good stories than you can shake a stick at 52/250 this week with the theme "Border town" as a prompt. This week some fine folks keep up the flashing tradition. So, open your robes and join in. Read while you flash. Write while you flash. Flash.

One year ago today J.D. Salinger died. I'm reminded of this by Katie Jean Shinkle who posted this killer cartoon at Facebook. Thanks, Katie.

Metazen has a new sister-cousin website called HOUSEFIRE. It's hot. Hot like Scarlett. Put some oven gloves on and have a look, kay?

And lastly, the fights have come to an end. The wrist tape has been cut away at Mel Bosworth's Eye Brains "writer fights." Matt Bell emerges victorious against Blake Butler while Roxane Gay took out a scrappy xTx in the second fight. It's all good either way. I'm convinced a person should get his or her ass whipped at least once a year. A bloody nose or black eye has a steady way of putting things back in perspective. It's never failed for me.

This Cigarette Pinched Between Her Lips and Others Things

2011-01-27T11:11:00.000-08:00

Spoke with a friend of mine yesterday about a poem he wrote years ago. I remembered the poem because it won an award, but I didn't remember the actual poem itself.

What I didn't know was that he wrote the poem after running across an old photograph of a young girl in a sun dress and pigtails and all that but with one glaring strangeness. The little girl had this cigarette pinched between her lips.

This detail took hold of his imagination, he said. And more eloquently, and in his own words, he said this about how the poem itself came to be: "It was like it was already a poem. It was a poem I needed to write a poem about." I love that.

Just finished watching the HBO series DEADWOOD. I thought it was fantastic. An ensemble cast with fast and smart dialogue that ranged from the profane to the lyrical, and a storyline that would almost write itself – the transformation of a camp into a fully realized town. If you've not watched this show, I would do so soon. Favorite line: "I don't drink we're I'm the only one with balls!" – Calamity Jane.

Quick note: Tom Robbins wrote the greatest preface of all time in his book EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. The greatest.

And since I've jumped back to the subject of writing (I can never stay away long and rarely think of much else) I've been enjoying the "writer fights" over at Mel Bosworth's blog Eye Brains. Maybe you would, too. Here's the latest between Roxane Gay and xTx.

It's Raining In The New Old West

2011-01-18T11:34:00.001-08:00

It's raining outside and the newsroom where I work smells of sewer. Men mostly now dead if not entirely placed the system in town during the WPA days and open grates line the sidewalks. When it rains, those grates, they fill up, cause a stir.

In the newsroom we adjust.

Living in the mountains, adjustment becomes a default position. And folks say we can't change. Change is all we can ever manage. Some things stay the same, but survival demands adaptation. Dealing with the scent of raw sewage is a walk in the park compared to watching train after train take coal out and come back empty while our buildings and schools stand in disrepair, while three blocks away more than a dozen people stand outside a community action program door waiting to hear if they can get help with heating assistance.

A walk in the park.

Hardly noticed while the new industry is the pill trade. People I watched grow up are now adults, enterprising young adults honing their business skills by filling prescriptions of painkillers counties or states away and rerouting them back to the mountains to be sold at $10 or $15 or $20 a pill. Selling themselves for pills. Selling others for pills. The new trade.

The New Old West – Eastern Kentucky. And folks don't always like to look this problem straight in the eye. Many would rather dwell on the natural beauty of our land, the Appalachian Mountains cast in morning fog, etc. etc. And that's fine. I do plenty of that myself. I think we are a resilient people, as has been said more times than I can count. But the reality is if you don't own a gun as a resident of this place, you're going to need to buy one.

But I ramble.

The rain has eased up, but the scent it brought remains. Five people I worked with not more than two weeks ago don't have to worry about this problem today. They are now unemployed, the offices where they will go for help, a few blocks down from the community action's post, offers a crowd of people three times the size. They stand in line and hope for work while the young adults sit nearby, waiting on a buy, and smiling.

Maybe everyone shouldn't have a gun.

THE LIT LAB: Alan Stewart Carl On His Story "What Our Fathers Knew"

2011-01-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

So, when “What Our Fathers Knew” first came out, it led to a lot of really fantastic writers – like Sheldon, here – contacting me or linking to the story. And I didn’t understand why. Seriously. The story was fine, I thought, and I knew I owed a debt to the Bull editors for helping get it into better shape, but I didn’t understand why this particular story was getting such a strong, positive response. I’m going to try to figure that out here – take a two-years removed look back and pick apart the story from the inside to see what I can see.

I remember that the story began life as an attempt to write a poker story. I was thinking bad beats and suck outs and all-ins. But, as stories often do, it unfurled differently than expected. I think this is because fiction is poorly suited for poker. Cards have no agenda; they don’t care who wins. But a story does care who wins. This is why the last scene in Rounders and the poker scene in Casino Royale suck so much. They remove the game’s amorality and thus its suspense.

I don’t know if that problem/realization is what pushed me to tell the story in first-person plural or not, but I suspect the POV choice was more-or-less an attempt to not have a protagonist whose fate was dependent on me inventing dramatic hands of poker. Once I made that POV choice, the specifics of the game – the actual hands and the bets and all of that – became meaningless to the story. I mean, you get a group of guys together to play poker and some lose and some win. That’s inevitable. Suddenly, the story was less about poker and more about this dynamic of friends where some are doing well and some aren’t and how that disrupts things for all of them.

That disruption within the poker games is, of course, what allows the men to think about the other, bigger disruptions in their lives – the wants of their wives, the needs of their children, etc. And it’s what, ultimately, makes them pine for the perceived stability their own father’s enjoyed.

And now I’ve gotten to what I think is the heart of the story: the role the remembered fathers play. And when I think about that role, I think about the way these fathers are portrayed as these manly men who had no worries. But what I really key on when I reread the story is the line: “Or so we think. Or so we hope.”

That line – as it relates to the validity of the memory of the fathers – turns a story about dissatisfied men into a story about myth making, about the ways we recreate our pasts and twist our perceptions to fit a reality we wish existed, rather than the one that does exist. These men in “What Our Fathers Know,” are remembering a past that almost surely didn’t exist – a manly past where men were fully in charge and unbothered by life.

If it sounds like I’ve thought about this aspect of myth-making before, it’s because I have. I don’t know if the myth-making is what other people respond to when they read “What Our Fathers Knew, but it’s what I see when I reread this. And when I see it, I can feel myself within the story. Because, when it comes to life/writing, I’m fascinated by this idea of reality, by the way we construct our own truths and all the ways those constructed truths come to disappoint/ruin us and, occasionally, save us. I’m sure this personal fascination with the heartbreaks of reality is why so much of my fiction involves myth making and mentally skewed people and/or fantastical worlds. It’s probably also why my favorite last line in all of fiction is: “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

Because, you know, it IS pretty to think so. Until it’s not. Until you’re sitting at a poker table and realize there’s probably no good explanation for anything. That’s what this story is about, I guess. Disillusionment.

UPCOMING: In The Lit Lab with Alan Stewart Carl

2011-01-14T10:14:00.000-08:00

I've thought it could be interesting to have an occasional post here called The Lit Lab where a writer will lay out his or her story on the cutting board and peel back the layers for us.

The first of these will be posted Monday as Alan Stewart Carl puts his story "What Our Fathers Knew" under the knife. The story was published at BULL: Fiction for Thinking Men and caught my eye, along with many others. If you've not read it, I would happily suggest doing so.

I look forward to sharing Alan's thoughts about it here and hope those who can will drop by for a visit Monday.

How To Lose a Hummingbird and Catch a Gun – Part 2

2011-01-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

Norella had not been at the church the day my dad had collapsed. She closed shop and took Sundays for fishing at Porter’s Pay Lake. During revivals she would sometimes close Saturday, too, for lack of business, and camp at Filler’s Dam and surely forget the town ever existed.

She wouldn’t have seen my dad pitch forward over the Silvertone and spread out across the floor, still-water eyes now turned inward, pulled inside a blazing skull full of scorched nerves so that all that was left on the outside was a wasted man, broken and lost. But I was sure she had heard about everything later – how his brothers carried him to the ambulance and followed closely all the way to the hospital. While counting out cash for pawned wedding rings and shooing kids away from the gun racks, Norella had heard about the five weeks at Kingston, the therapy and how the church had prayed for weeks afterwards to run the devil from his mind, and then later the deeper demons of heartbreak after my mother left with the other man and his good, Christian parents took me in when no else could.

By the time my dad showed up with the Hummingbird tucked under his arm, she had heard enough to know there was nothing to do but accept it. Even more than the desperate and senseless, the heartbroken were not to be reasoned with.

Norella dipped her arm up to the elbow inside the glass case and pulled the gun from the second shelf and placed it between them where it sat quietly atop the thick glass, black and oily, no fight or flop. I left the store with the gun wrapped in a worn and thin dish towel and a box of shells in my back pocket and the palm of my empty right hand tingling like the creased and pinched end of an amputated limb, itching through to the dirty fingernails.

The Hummingbird might have swung just a touch from its peg when I closed the door behind me.

How to Lose a Hummingbird and Catch a Gun – Part 1

2011-01-12T07:37:00.000-08:00

The Hock Shop was at the top of Tilly Hill, at the county line and about two-hundred feet from Bill C's beer store. It was a place of old magic and unnamed smells, warm colors and strange music, of feeling up and down, depending on circumstance. Instruments of all types hung from pegs at the tops of the walls. Below that were still more instruments. Guitars, banjos, mandolins. Each one hung quietly like tacked up butterflies full of color and the possibility of beauty.

I walked slowly, deliberately down the line of guitars near the back of the shop. At the counter Norella Sizemore watched with a phone at her ear. The guitar case in my hand shuffled toward the floor and then back to the ceiling and again with each teardrop step I made to the Hummingbird in its place at the end of the wall.

It was my grandmother’s and had been here for five years, untouched, unwanted. Scratched, scuffed with spots of curved wood seemingly deadened by years, but deceptive in that way. Its sound was that of rich, aged experience, years and years on front porches and early evening church services, late nights cross-legged on the living room hardwood, heart pumping with industrial folk and deep blues. And the curves of the wood, the very insides of the instrument, had drawn all that into it and left its haunted mark.

“What’ve you got there, Greg?” Norella asked. She was still at the counter, the phone back in its place. Her voice carried across the empty shop, boredom bred from familiarity. She sat hooked across the counter, bird-like, her thin forearms covering a book of crossword puzzles. Her skin clung tightly to muscle like masking tape to tree bark.

This wasn’t my first visit, and where I stood now, in front of the Hummingbird, my grandmother’s guitar, was the usual spot. Inside the guitar case I carried was the 1966 Silvertone, my dad’s guitar which I inherited at sixteen. The fret boards grooved out with channels from his father’s fingertips over the years of practice and performance. I felt I had contributed nothing to those grooves, playing along fret boards, plucking strings, but never serious enough, never good enough, loud enough, inspired enough, to leave a lasting impression of any kind on anyone or anything. I placed the guitar case on the glass counter with the twenty-point diamond rings and necklaces and guns swimming like hot pavement underneath, popped the latches and said, “You seen this before?”

Norella took a pair of spaghetti colored glasses from beside the phone and slid them up the thin slope of her nose. “Yeah, I seen this before. You wanting to sell or trade?” She looked sideways across the room at the Hummingbird. When I said nothing, she shook her head, her small mouth lost inside smoke-soaked wrinkles. “What the hell for?”

“That.” I pointed to a dead black 9mm revolver under the glass.

“I don’t mean what for. I mean why?” She took the glasses off and leveled her eyes at me. She might have been beautiful once. Light blue eyes, thin, attractive features, a playfulness that could have been nice years ago, before the smoke and swapping in this dive of a shop had pressed in on her and took her energy, her youth, her ability to see the goodness in people. All that was left in her gaze was the sure notion that people would sell their father’s most prized possessions for near to nothing if it all came down that bad. She closed the case and took a long cigarette from under the counter, lit it and took a long drag.

“You know why that Hummingbird is still hanging on that damn peg over there?”

“Busted up guitar. Hard sell,” I answered.

“Bullshit. I could’ve sold or traded that thing years ago. Hadn’t been here two weeks and I had three or four offers. Folks like a guitar like that, especially if they play it, you know, give it a test run.” She took another draw from her cigarette and the smoke from the ember clouded up the space between us, carried in a heavy silence. “Your daddy should’ve never brought that thing in here.”

I snapped out my wallet and produced four ones and a ten, held them up. “Unless you think that’s enough to do it, then we’ll need to talk about trade.”

“Hell, I’ll give it to you, the Hummingbird.” I raised my eyebrows. “You think I won’t?” she asked.

“I need the gun,” I said.

The Grass Will Show Itself Again, I Know It

2011-01-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

Many a foot of dusty snow here in County Floyd in Eastern Kentucky, but the icicles hanging from the eve are dripping just outside the window and so the sun is coming with purpose and determination. Grass will again be seen, sprouting, striving, continuing, those blades of pure and beautiful, a sensibility of always and forever.

Wrong Tree Review's second issue, online this trip around the mulberry tree, seems a success. So grateful to those who have visited the site and of course to those who contributed. Jarrid Deaton will continue to do good things with this journal, and I will always be proud to have been a part of the beginnings of WTR. I still believe in it as a venue for work just a bit different than the average story, the vision Jarrid and I have always held to in regard to fiction dating back to our earlier adventures together in publishing. Again, a drink and make it a double for WTR!

I'm moving again tomorrow. Nomad. That's the word. A close guess would place me living between 50 to 150 different places since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Most of the time those moves were never more than a county over. I lived in more than 20 places in one county at one point. But this move is different.

For about seven years my brocuz Gary and I lived with our grandparents. Seven years. That's the longest I was ever in one spot. After Sunday, I'll be living there again. It's as close to a homeplace as I have. I'll be tending to my grandmother (who I, and everyone else calls Mother). I look forward to it, to say the least, and if at all possible I'll die there in that house, either two years from now or seventy. Whichever.

Well, the sun got scared and went behind the mountain, or maybe a cloud. But the icicles are still dripping and the mountain roads will be clear tomorrow, in time for moving. Before I go, I'd like you to indulge me in giving a list of things I'm reading at the current time:

Kentucky Straight by Chris Offutt
Airships by Barry Hannah
How They Were Found by Matt Bell
Dogs of God by Pinckney Benedict
Various (and amazing) online work from writers and friends honestly too numerous to name.

Okay, cats and kittens. I'm going out to check to see if the snowplows have salted and laid blade on the secondary roads, see if the roads out to the marketplaces are passable.

Dang.

It's A New Year But Things Still Feel The Same.

2011-01-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

Scot Siegel has two micros up today at A-Minor. Stop by and take a look when you have time.

Also, Jeff Callico at Negative Suck extended a fine gesture in having me as his featured author for NS's January issue. Thanks to you, sir. Just navigate to the "Current Content" tab and there I'll be with many other writers with grand work in this issue. Jeff was generous enough to publish six of my stories for this month. Each can be found by following the links marked "Compton" at the end of each piece.

I'm working with a few other writers on an Exquisite Quartet story for Used Furniture Review. I think readers will enjoy the end result of this collaboration. Thanks to Meg Tuite for inviting me to take part.

New today, also, is a story of mine called "He Finds Her There" at Pure Slush, Matt Potter's fine new publication. Matt also talked with me via PS's Hue Questionnaire about my favorite color. I liked that questionnaire...it made me think. Much thanks, of course, to Matt for all of this. A fine writer, editor and person, he.

I was witness to my friend's wedding this weekend and he gave me a witness gift – Barry Hannah's Airships. How wonderful is that? Thanks, JRock, and, again, congrats.

It's a new year, but things still feel the same. We'll see what happens next.

Get A Glass, A Drink For You All

2010-12-27T06:13:00.000-08:00

I've been staring through the window at all you fine folks the last few weeks. Mostly just that, and staying quiet otherwise. Sometimes I just like to watch. There's a lot to see, to read, to hear about. There's a lot going on in there. It's nice.

I put a temp hold on submissions to A-Minor until Feb. 1. Stocked up into late March, so I thought it was time. In related news, I've decided to step back from my everyday duties with Wrong Tree Review. Don't take that as a sign of WTR fading into the sunset. Just the opposite. I intend to work with Jarrid Deaton to get the material for Issue 2 in an online format in the next while, and Jarrid will continue the good work with that publication.

Jarrid and I teamed up in 2004 to publish the print journal Cellar Door Magazine for a year before letting it loose to run off to the woods and do as it would. CD was sort of my brainchild and WTR was sort of Jarrid's baby. We've just always worked together on these sort of publishing adventures. When the wheels slowed on WTR, I do what I always do: I started jumping into other things in the meantime. Giving Jarrid room to run with WTR just seems like the right thing to do at this point. I love it, am proud of it, and have no doubt it will continue as a fine journal. And I'm never far away. Even with solo projects, such as my journal A-Minor, I'm always looking to Jarrid for input and advice. We're just bound by words.

I have a collection of short stories in a full-length manuscript form called THE SAME TERRIBLE STORM sent to a press in Alabama where it will stand up beside other manuscripts and see if it can be the sexiest of them all. If it is sent home to me, I will tell it that I think it's beautiful and that I will always love it. I will. I've had several folks offer me words of encouragement and say awfully nice things about this little attempt of mine, and I can't say how much I appreciate all of those nice things they've said. Support. Without that, we're all just telling stories out loud in dark empty rooms. And y'all know that's what we'd do. The stories tell us what to do, not the other way around. We all know this.

In respect to kind words and support, I would like to share with you a couple things sent my way concerning my work that really lifted me up at a time when I truly needed it. One correspondence was from the poet Darryl Price (who spoke of myself and fellow writer, the brilliant Marcus Speh) as well as another from writer and editor Mark Reep. Please allow me to indulge and share these with you. This is the support most writers think was lost at some point during the 1920s in Paris, but still exists:

"It's not only the work, it's who you are and what you do for all the rest of us. You continually take time to promote everyone else's efforts, you're unfailingly encouraging and supportive. That's no small thing. And all you give in that regard is bringing good stuff back around to you too." -- Mark Reep

"Both Marcus (Speh) and Sheldon are to me the prime examples of the best and finest new writing taking place in the world today. Original, creative, willing to chance everything to make it sing for you. Whenever I'm lucky enough to read a new piece by either writer I'm immediately struck by how wonderful a thing writing can be and obviously is. They are both capable of turning a new found phrase on its head and emptying out old notions to find the perfectly edible nut in the moment and sharing it. It's discovery and invention and courage these fellows trade in, and that makes all of us as readers of literature very lucky indeed." -- Darryl Price

I would be hard-pressed to explain here in these few words how I feel the same about Price and Reep's work and tireless support of others, not to mention nearly every other writer I've come to know in the past decade.

Community is not lost, folks. We thrive and are as strong as ever. Each one of you, your continuous work at this lonely craft, your eagerness to shine a light on the person next to you, are but two of the many reasons for this.

A drink for you all. I insist.

This Is Not A Story. This Is Music. Listen.

2010-12-18T21:49:00.001-08:00

I visited my old homeplace tonight, a town in the County of Pike called Virgie. The home is brown and warm and sings memory and holds my grandmother, who I call Mother, as does everyone I personally know.

Mother taught my dad to play guitar. My dad taught me to play guitar. She learned from her Irish father, Augustus Payne Hobson, who played both the banjo and guitar and learned from his and his and his.

Song is our family crest, our language.

My cousin Gary Dwayne (Hosscat) and my uncle Gary Wayne (Father of Hosscat) joined me this evening. We played several songs while Mother sat at the head of the table and listened, as always, polite and attentive, the halo never more than inches above her head.

Then she retired to her bedroom. We continued. Minutes passed, and she came back from her bedroom, the walker appearing first from the doorway and then Mother herself, her eyes tired and her mouth drawn, her finger pointing to us. She demanded silence, and Mother spoke a prayer.

She reminded us that Jesus was the son of God and that no single person should question this. She raised her hands in the air, the walker a forgotten thing before her, a metal thing of earth with no place in this moment. She spoke in tongues and prayed for my mom, prayed for my mom's soul and thanked God that my mom was still alive.

She spoke again in tongues. It filled the warm brown of my homeplace like days of old, when my skin was without scars and my heart still beating, still whole.

When she finished, Mother praised Jesus and sat again at the head of the table, head dropped, the wet path of a tear shining across her strong cheekbone. Her beautiful and holy hands again placed patiently in front of her. She looked again at us, the soft blue of her eyes calm now and loving cast out across her children.

The three of us said nothing. We strummed the chord of G, we sang, we strummed the chord of C, and we sang "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and watched Mother raise her hands and praise and praise and praise.

For all the wrong I've done to the best of people I've known and the wrong I've done to myself, tonight I am reminded that her blood is my blood, and for the first time in such an awful long time I almost believe that because of this there may be hope.

Hope is enough tonight. Hope is a new life. It was not there yesterday.