stick it in acrylic
When you can’t throw it away
Reply
Monthly Archives: April 2017
Wonder
Another fabulous photo taken by my friend, David Stalker.
Is it prudent to protest?
My eyes burn. I can’t see. The concrete is hot beneath my back. They keep chanting, “Babies keep on dying. Nobody seems to care.”
Did I hit my head? Why is nobody helping me?
“Nixon is a murderer,” they yell. “Bring our brothers home now!”
A piece of clarity returns. It took a long time to get to Miami. Nixon is giving his second acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.
I need Sam’s strong arms, the ones who promised to keep me safe if I agreed to come. Some Vietnam vet he is.
“Hold on, Frank,” a voice says.
“No, man. We gotta go. We’ll be arrested like the others.”
“I said hold on, dammit. I think I know this girl.”
I feel a hand on my forehead. “Chicken Coop? Is that you?”
Images float in my head—a mint green Pontiac. Crows pecking out eyes in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Body parts in an unplugged freezer that make me want to laugh. I can’t. I’m too dizzy.
“Chicken Coop?”
It’s no longer 1972. It’s 1963 and I’m nine years younger. Now, it’s not the pig’s smoky gas that makes my tears.
(The beginning of my work in progress about race relations in 1963)
Learning with challenges
Scoots’ hand in mine, we walk home from school. His other hand blows a new harmonica, one of many Miss Helen bought at Johnson’s Variety.
He’s getting better at playing “Has Anybody Seen My Gal.” He misses notes sometimes, but now I can almost sing along without hour-long Pauses between the words.
“You like playing, Scoot?”
He takes the harp from his mouth and wipes it on his sleeve like a real musician. “Like DeFord Bailey.”
“Who’s Difford Bailey?”
“DeFord Bailey. Best ever. That’s gonna be you someday, Scooter,” he says in a Frankish-enough voice I have to laugh. “DeFord had polio. Polio. Like me.”
“You never had polio, Scooter.”
“DeFord learned anyway,” he says, straight in my eyes.
And then I know. Scooter understands that, unlike most folks in Holly Gap, Frank believes in his abilities to learn.
Scoot drops my other hand and uses both to play us home.
Excerpt from The Moonshine Thicket
Dog food Sandwich
Scooter grabs my hand when we head home from school. “Angry, angry,” he says.
“You’re angry Scooter? How come?”
“Farter’s angry.”
I’m about to ask him how he knows when the Great Stupid Gatsby Franken-Farter rushes up behind us.
He shoves my shoulder and breaks my hold on Scooter.
“You’re a real scam, aren’t you, Enema?”
I brush his germs from my arm. “What’s eating you?”
“You thought it was funny, didn’t you?”
He’d finally done it. He ate the dog food sandwich.
Scooter backs away and starts mumbling. I reach in my satchel and hand him my yo-yo to take his mind off things. I’ll untangle the string Later.
Excerpt from the Moonshine Thicket
The Magic of Nature
How can something so small be so beautiful? (A friend of mine took these amazing photos.)
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 