Stone Boy of Appalachia


An oblong stone
that was once a boy
who angered a woman
stares out
from the end of the yard
where auto frames
on cinder blocks
ease themselves to dust
their rusted coils
offer up 
a nested last
resistance
lockjaw boy 
stands mute

City cousins
run right past
to picnic as their mothers sweep
high on wooden swings
giggling into treetops
girlishly
and later on
to gawk
slack-jawed
at the strip-mined
vein
scraped right down
to the tendons
of the town

 -first published in Making it Speak:  Artists and Writers in Cahoots



They Say Women are Hard to Understand


A school room globe
is an accurate depiction
of the world
but impractical
for navigation and exploration
maps are handier for travel

makes me think of year I turned 12
my mother worn out
father’s button down shirts
every week
heaped upon the bed
wrinkled whispering of
washed-out color
waiting to be ironed

she left it to me
to discover the secrets of their construction
seemingly logical
and flat
easy to make smooth

but there was this part around the shoulder
I could never understand
the shiny metal of the iron
angled in my hand
only reflected the puzzle back

sometimes I burned my fingers 
my father didn’t know
I had begun to iron his shirts
we never bothered to tell him