Audubon Drive, Memphis
by James SeayThere’s a black-and-white photo of Elvisand his father Vernon in their first swimming pool.Elvis is about twenty-one and “Heartbreak Hotel”has just sold a million.
Subjects: Poetry
Vietnam War Memorial
by Robert Morgan“. . . From that pit you can’t see much official Washington, just sky and trees and names and people . . .” What we see first seems a shadowor a retaining wall in the park,
Georgia Scene: 1964
by John Beecher“. . . dragging that 70-year-old white lady down the courthouse steps with her head going bam on every step . . .” And so this cat he was from the GBI that’s the cracker FBI kept feeling up the chick’s legs with his electric cattle prod and making them wiggle and holler
Mill Village and The Stretch-Out
by Ron Rash“I was only seventeen, a girl / who still could trust a suit and smile.” Mill Village Mill houses lined both sides of every roadlike boxcars on a track. They were so closea man could piss off of his own front porch,hit four houses if he had the wind.
Grandfather Long the Last Time
by Robert Hill Long“I am myself a history / Flanked always by A.D., B.C.” I. THE FRONT PORCH GLIDER Back and forth the glider heaves our strange bodies,eighty-eight and twenty-four,your head swaying on its stem like a balding dandelion:eyes almost frosted over,throat whiskers roothair-white, you smellof mildew and ammonia—Is this the God-haired evangelist whose supper prayerwas as big »
Aspiration and Varieties of Religious Experience
by Lynn Powell“I saw God, my son once told me. He lives in a field of snow. What could you see? Just snow. And footprints.” “Aspiration”Chattanooga, Tennessee Farther south they call it hog jowl. Up north they call it salt pork. But we called it streaked meat—
Between Assassinations And Black Maid: Two Poems by Alan Shapiro
by Alan Shapiro“What was your last name, where did you live?” Between AssassinationsOld court. Old chain net hanging in frayed links from the rim,the metal backboard dented, darker where the ballfor over thirty years has kissed it, the blacktop buckling,the white lines nearly worn away. Old common groundwhere none of the black men warming up before the »
The Last Lap of the Daytona 500
by Adrian Blevins“. . .there’s now the death of Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt.” When Dale Earnhardt dies, I’m standing in Uncle Doc’s kitchen, listening to the men put across the woe of the penalty of NASCAR.
Robert Penn Warren: “Mad for Poetry”
by William R. Ferris“I said, ‘Couldn’t we go a little slower?’ And he said, ‘With a white man sitting in this front seat with me? You won’t catch me going less than ninety miles an hour. Mister, you’ll just have to take it. I’m saving your life.’” By any measure Robert Penn Warren is one of America’s most »
“Bartram’s Trail” and “Pawley’s Island Shakedown”
by Thorpe Moeckel“There’s no horizon, / no line on the Atlantic. . .” Bartram’s Trail To follow Bartram’s trail upstream, past Tugaloo, to cross the Chattooga River at Earl’s Ford, to go up the Warwoman Valley, up past the cascades & bridalveils of Finney Creek, up along the Continental Divide between Rabun Bald & Hickory Knob, is »
“Shooting the Breeze” and “Chiaroscuro”
by Edison Jennings“Only later would I learn / about the great-winged vultures the long-gone pharaohs deified. . .” Shooting the Breeze Aloof and aloft, the buzzards circled the farm,and we would shoot at them, to no effect,small guns popping, round after round.Did we know better?
Ballad of Vertical Integration
by Lee Ann Brown“For each and every one of us, a rainbow is the prize.” Civil Rights was brewing in a Charlotte coffee shop,At an orange juice bar called Tanner’sdown near the main bus stop.Cross of Trade & Tyron where the Cherokee once hunt,Harry Golden cast his shining eye on a way to make his point.