The first two poems here come from Adrian Blevins’ new collection, “Appalachians Run Amok”. Ms. Blevins’ exemplary wit sparked our current batch of posts (below) on the Country and the City. Sorry to hammer on that fact but your editor feels a need to distance our wander to the periphery from trend-mongering trumpery (like this gross Politico piece tracing The Donald’s effect on American writing). Money pimps in publishing are stuck on venture capitalist J.D. Vance’s “Hillbillly Elegy”. But vital rural voices–in the south and north–aren’t asking: WWJDD? Bless Ms. Blevins (and her anti-fascist horses!) for a truer inspiration and for letting us post poems from “Appalachians” as well as a newbie, “Walmart Status.” B.D.
Poem for My Mother with Frank O’Hara in It
Ask an Appalachian to violate the law & she’ll toss her pretty hose into a fetid ravine.
She will crop off her jeans. She’ll curse, she’ll smoke: …..she will visibly amputate
the heads of……..pumpkins……..cabbage……..crickets……..fish
Oh, she’ll want to wander down the creek bed, but she’ll conjugate Latin verbs instead.
She’ll correct the grammar of the lady Baptists. ……She will shun being sweet.
She’ll eat taffy in the form of whiskey……..down by the barn.
She’ll get in the hay to save it from the rain. ……..She’ll drive the tractor.
She’ll shoot a baby rabbit. ……..She’ll hear it cry, ……..which will be horrid.
She’ll go to college & have a baby……..who’ll be my big sister.
She’ll run away to New York. ……..She’ll be drawn by a street artist there—
so tall…..so thin…so red-headed & country. …So acute…..so excessive…& fresh
Her hair will be short, ……..it will be the late 1950s and
all of America……..will feel like America……..finally commencing,
like pink is a good color for the gist to be……..like everything’s up-&-coming
like shoots are poking out of the sides of buildings
flopping their foggy tongues against the past inside of everything
& maybe Frank O’Hara sees my mother there & admires her for shunning the cows
& the accents & the cornhusk dolls & the quilts & the reapers & the rakes & the hoes
because who wouldn’t? …..That shit…..let us admit…can be ridiculous.
But New York is loud…..New York is impenetrable…..like everything’s a car wreck
& a tragedy……..made of electricity……..& pee
& there are no meadows in New York, either—no ponds…no pastures…no sheep.
Also the horses in New York are fascists. They do what the cops say. The cops of New York,
they say go, & the horses of New York? ….They go. ….But in Appalachia
the wildlife has its own way of doing things. In Appalachia the horses never met a cop
they didn’t want to humiliate, whereas in Appalachia the horses stop whatever they’re
……..doing
to amble down the creek bed looking for watercress since hunting for honeyed things
is a great way to live, as all Appalachian horses seem just somehow to know. …You
……..chew off
the rein. You spit out the bit. …& no matter where you are after that or what anyone says
or how stormily, …you’ve done it. ……..you’ve made it, …..you’re home.
Poem with Attitude Wearing Red Flannel
In other news, I’m happiest in the country going from place to place
in the early spring, looking for objects that are in my most humble opinion
not too hideous like this almost translucent little Japanese bowl
and this not-quite pornographic sham Victorian thing. In cities I’m always
hot and restless as in kind of claustrophobic and wee bit suicidal
as though I’m pregnant again and the emergent fetus is crushing
my vital organs again like it’s the 1980’s again and in order to make the owner
of a retail place just off the Lee Highway let me use the bathroom
I’ve got to boost my Southern accent like actresses do in movies
featuring hair salons and diners because apparently filmmakers
know jackshit about southern girls except that they talk in a lilt
the filmmakers like to exploit because apparently filmmakers think
vowel sounds are sexy, which of course they are, so what I’m saying is,
being in New York or Chicago or LA is to me like having to pee
while driving on a highway in the 1980’s when you’re heavy with child
and have to stop at the Exxon to use what people call the facilities. But
unfortunately for you the facilities are locked, meaning now you’ve got
to pretend to the southern man behind the counter that you’re more southern
than even his very own Mama is, saying hon and bless your heart
and upon my word and all like that until you’re more cliche than the filmmakers
exploiting the actresses in the pigeonholing movies because that’s apparently
what’s required to make the fat redneck behind the counter hand over
the big key to your liberation in the nasty little bathroom where
you hope your impending child won’t get syphilis or chlamydia from the fixtures
or decide to join the Tea Party once grown because if there’s one thing
you don’t like more than a city, it’s a Republican, and anyway you’re actually
pretty country in actual reality in your red flannel shirt and big brown truck
going from yard sale to yard sale in the early spring singing twangy songs
to the robins and the hogs. So here in the fourteenth March of the twenty-first century
before the summer you turn 50 let’s please just remember that
plus the additional and equally important bonus fact of how you’re
finally sophisticated enough to end a poem by saying, fuck you! fuck you! adieu!
to the haughty and shallow and scheming and affected in their sly white apartments
and fake feather boas, preferring evermore spring and the robins
and even the hogs heating up the world again to a ruckus and fuss.
Walmart Status
If you can’t find it at Walmart, you can’t find it, a Walmart lady says at Walmart
all sweet & satisfied discounting ocean waves & lonesomeness & philosophy
& bees. Plus buffalo plus piccolos plus the old recollection of the fun
of walking to Lum and Sue’s down by the tracks for something like toffy
& not unrelatedly dusk itself like the watery lid of a preemie’s eye
protecting my little head from its fear of people & churches & sidewalks
& streets. Lady, I want at Walmart the word moonling if a moonling can be
a piercing. Or for Walmart to be horses, pecans, or petting geese. Or could
Walmart be sugar cane? Could it be honey? Lady, I want at Walmart
for Walmart to raise hell against Walmart like a starving pioneer in a hot field of fog
wants Yellow Fever cause Walmart’s made a moonling out of me like wanting’s
an itch plus a gap like a hack plus a wound & hence a cost & a trick & a muddle
& a missile, really. A bomb, a flunk, a botch. A cuss & grunt. A holler. A sigh.