I was a bald baby obsessed
with fellow babies blessed
with heads full of hair.
Mother said luxurious hair
on babies really annoyed me.
Apparently, I found it disconcerting.
I wanted to seize it,
grab it as though it were
a misplaced pelt
or a baby toupee
that could (and should) be removed.
I couldn’t be like them,
but I could make them like me,
highbrow and hairless.
Bald babies in solidarity—just imagine.

I’m a feller from a holler,

And I guess that’s all I’ve ever been,

My folks have lived up in the mountains,

Since a way back when.

If you follow the stories,

And all our family tales,

They trace back to the mountains,

Of old Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Even my English Ancestors,

Farmed the margins of the isle,

They were used to thin steep soil,

And knew how to face life’s trials.

I imagine when they immigrated,

And saw Virginia’s shores,

And heard of the far off mountains,

They knew what was in store.

They weren’t made for the tide water,

And the gentry left them cold,

They had known enough of lords and ladies,

In their island home of old.

They loaded up their muskets,

And there plunder and packs,

And what they couldn’t heap upon a horse,

They carried on their backs.

They followed after Boone,

On his trace up through the gap,

And they settled in a holler,

There to farm and hunt and trap.

Now, of course they made some changes,

In this new land they settled now,

Corn was no longer wheat and barley,

And “plough” became a “plow”.

But the water that bubbled,

From over rocks and rills,

Still made the “usquebaugh”

In the same old copper stills.

They still sang the same old ballads,

The same old stories here were told,

By the fire in a cabin,

On winter nights so long and cold.

The land was big and wild,

But of course, so were they,

They were people used to hardships,

And they were here to stay.

I reckon it seems old fashioned,

That I ain’t changed all that much,

On the land I call a farm,

I still keep a mule, a cow and such.

Independence starts in the furrow,

And I think it follows the plow,

It’s always been that way,

From way back then up til now.

And as we learned from grandpap’s grandpap,

When the world becomes too much,

Get yourself up in a holler,

And find some earth to touch.

Remember
whirling twirling until you fell down dizzy and watched the sky spin and the sun spat rainbows like a cinimatic mandala and you were Robin Hood Dog and you were the Sugar Plum Fairy and you were the Wickedest Witch in the Hood and you were Nancy Drew before you realized you didn’t need a man to save you and then you were a Dragon Roaring down the street and then… and then… you could… fly?
Remember that?

We      enter              the
                             rusty hinges
             of
                          humidity                             &
                               time,     a
                       knuckle,     a
         stained

                                                         web,
                       
                                                         dark.

         My                              gut  prickles,

  yanked.          I
                                                                 howl
to the            dusk.

~ Erasure of Felicia Zamora’s poem, “Memory of Sheep Rustling”

We leave for Newark tomorrow

They’re going to bury me alive, little sad shape!
They’re going to tie a hundred fish hooks into my hair!
… While you weren’t home I picked your locks

and licked all the dust off your picture frames-
I’m chasing 52- the lonely whale, the french suit, David’s birth year.
I am particularly fascinated by random bursts of roadside flowers.

Twin rabbits ran towards Heat Lightning and I thought
It might be nice to hit them with my car, the sensation
Of bone and flesh giving way under assembly line weight.

Watched rainbows dance in the wire grid of the fryer basket
And the oil popped on a kamikaze mission towards my cornea-
Missing slightly, it seared a circle just below my brow.

You remove the feeling with the same lie that gets rid of a
Tapeworm- you starve your heart three days and
Hunch your fluttering body over a basin of milk.

I step out ready to step back in
my instinct has become  to caution
yet her surprised presence  was bedecked in delight 

my squirrels would love these
she exclaimed  the sunflowers bowing between us
their regal heads stalwart on lean necks
turned toward the rising sun

into her smiled face  alight 
I could resist nothing
my smile returned in kind

so much clarity
black and white coherence 
nothing between us 
in this passing moment

I went on to water the flowers
pull the weeds
trim the shaggy bushes of their uneven ends
watch the sweet yellow finches appreciate the blooms ornamented along the front walk
all the while her face brilliantly transfixed upon the open doorway
my mind had just become

the perfect amount
of days,
poems,
effort,
energy.
I am frazzled,
stressed.

fourteen hours until takeoff.

These monuments, they speak to me  
in shadowed figures set in stone
recording births and deaths in solemn tones.

I shiver with the wildness of this place,
awed how time reclaimed a haunted spot
of sacred ground, neglected – now forgotten –
family plot.  

My boots crush meadow grass,
and trumpet vine assaults the rusted fence,
sharp evidence no one comes
to tend this place of pine box memories
lost to verdant fields and pin oak trees.