You live in your stupor, careless
of this world around you, living
only for the bottle in your hand.

You would and have starved
for it; it empties your pockets:
The bills lay scattered on the floor
and the cabinets remain bare.

You say you can quit, promise—
then tip the bottle,
press it against your lips,
take a swig, smile
like it’s the funniest thing in the world
and break my heart.

Sarah Adams, of Ligon, is a BSCTC student and a Big Sandy Singer.

The fly cries out, “O’ spider, you have me trapped!
Mightn’t you let me go?”
“O’ fly, dost thou not know the scheme of things?
I have you now for dinner,
but tonight some hungry critter
will take me down.”
“Well, then, spider, so much for existential anguish!
Let us forego our ego and join the whole;
Don’t fight Nature. Ride her flow.”
The two sang merrily until the spider had his feast.
Evil? I think not!
Natural, indifferent? Indubitably!

Jacob Anderson is a BSCTC student, attending classes on the Pikeville Campus.

Bradford pears,

my wife says,
are planted only for show,
cracking in even the slightest storm.

In fall, their inedible fruit
encrusts the curbs, the driveway and cars,
in rinds so bitter even starlings

spit them out on the wing.
Yet like all round things
they desire only to shine, to fall

in a field, letting soft flesh slough away
over black crescent seeds.
We lose a few every year

to an ice storm or gale
for something terrible always happens
to the most fragile. In February

when starlings squawk,
picking over the limbs,
flapping raincoats over the snow

we forget how they'll turn –
Near March, our anniversary,
after my wife's

read every gardening catalog
full of exotic flowers,
piled on the table, we're always surprised

when the trees explode into bloom.
Though a step slower, I work
in the yard. For one week

pears illuminate the neighborhood,
petals swaying like lanterns, shining
just under our skin.

(First published in Redactions: Poetry and Poetics)

David Cazden received an Al Smith Fellowship for poetry from the Kentucky Arts Council in 2008. He is the author of one book, Moving Picture (Word Press, 2005) and lives in Lexington.

fishing in the land
that glaciers scarred
the land of wolves
bears and eagles
air pure floating balm
on fevered skin
water clean and placid
ancient and new
wide winged birds
soar with beauty
with a silent eye
for the meat below

tents under green giants
grown eternal
cook fires break the stillness of night
men sit silent in the cathedral
of nature attuned to the life force
surrounding like fog

the resting time
the healing time

Randall Chandler was born in 1941 in Lowmansville. He attended two years at Eastern Kentucky University, being an indifferent student at best. He joined the workforce, and at different times in his life has been a salesman, logger, small business owner, coal mine electrician, and long distance truck driver. He says, “Since retiring I try to do only those things that I enjoy.”

Billy Ray was flat out ugly.
He was an ugly baby.
He was an ugly man.

To make matters worse
he was not a scholar,
quitting school when he
became of age.

Women didn’t have
much truck with him,
but he was known
by that mountain saying,
“a good old boy.”

He married in his late 30s
to a woman with two kids
he found in a honky-tonk
in Virginia.

Not much later, as small towns
will do, it was whispered
that his wife was going out
with a strip mine operator.

The strip mine operator
was found at his doorstep
with seventeen .22 slugs
lodged in his body.

They never discovered
who did it.

Billy Ray took his wife camping.
He was drinking and accidentally
shot his wife in the throat
with a .22 gun.

He was charged with manslaughter
and spent two years in prison.
Mountain justice was done.

Randall Chandler was born in 1941 in Lowmansville. He attended two years at Eastern Kentucky University, being an indifferent student at best. He joined the workforce, and at different times in his life has been a salesman, logger, small business owner, coal mine electrician, and long distance truck driver. He says, “Since retiring I try to do only those things that I enjoy.”

The Roman ruins at night:
time jagged, broken, and stacked
upon itself.

A short, pot-bellied man serenading us,
his head resting upon a barely-stringed instrument,
as if it were a pillow.

Evening sun filtering through doors of the hilltop church
overlooking Firenze, while two boys from Wales
film the day dying below in slow, yellow time.

Floating among purple jellyfish in a Manarola
cove and not getting stung.

Standing on a hidden rock in the middle
of the Mediterranean against the wet chest
of a new husband.

On a boat anchored next to a thin, rocky beach,
a woman dancing a slow tango to only
the sound of blue.

In medieval paintings, skeletons singing in hell
and camels with many heads drinking blood
pouring out of a woman’s mouth.

Swimming by a gondola, a rat
big as a cat.

In St. Mark’s Square, a fat woman
cackling and screaming at the pigeon on her wrist
alongside a hippy mocking the Charleston,
knees knocking, to make his son laugh.

While we lounge on a terrace close to the sky,
a woman calling her slippery rhythm through
an open window, just before the bells
of the village tower herald the silence
of the night.

A short time later, an elderly couple below
attacking the dirt in their little garden by the sea,
at an hour I normally do not know.

Melanie Culbertson, a Salyersville native living in Louisville, is assistant professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College in Sellersburg, Indiana. She also teaches as an adjunct instructor at Spalding University in Louisville and formerly taught at the University of Evansville, Indiana. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing at Indiana University and has published fiction in The American Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Puerto del Sol, The Louisville Review, and others. She was nominated for two national Pushcart Prizes.

for David Kazee, musician and beloved friend (1959-2010)

I wonder how your fingers that graced piano keys
like wings of fragile birds could even touch a gun.
I wonder of your last view of Mash Fork,
of the valley you held so dear. I wish for the sliver of a moon,
deer running free across a field, like the last time
I was there. I saw you too at church, sitting by yourself,
lonesome, like you’d never looked before.

I wish I had hugged you and sat next to you just like I wish
my husband and I had had coffee with you on your huge porch
the last time you asked. Now there are no wishes left,
only stars.

What if you had waited to see the morning? There could not
have been mourning, never a more beautiful day than October 13,
sun so low one could touch it and not burn, yet the world on fire,
all red and gold. Didn’t you see it? After all,
surely you only were just asleep.

You are so much more than that body, with your genius gift
of lullabies, who would not leave Mash Fork,
who would run down the hill to make sure my father,
your neighbor with heart trouble, was not working too hard in the heat,
you who said few unkind words about anyone,
even though it takes more than one to pull
a trigger. Were we all lulled into thinking how easy
it all was for you? How easy to be Dave and sing the days
away. Did you ever get to dance at a wedding
at which you sang?

To forget that body, my mother burns the brush you cut
in her chimney at night, the warm flames rising
to where you are. She takes her solitary walk
beside the hillside grave where you lie,
still praying and singing because she can’t cease and ah,
that sunny day, rows of cars lined one side
of that narrow country road, snaking around that hill
like a groaning train, so many feet pressed against
the earth above that hardly a blade of grass
could be seen.

We are so much more than our bodies.
Because of you, I pluck at my piano
into the wee hours, drink from the cup of a friend,
sit a spell next to one alone, if he looks lonesome.

You would. In this world and even
on Mash Fork, plenty of elderly fathers working
in the heat need tending to, if we only pay attention.

Maybe there are some “next times” left,
a wish after all. Close our eyes
tight enough, maybe even two.

I promise, beloved friend, to keep
Mash Fork sweet, its creek across from
your house, my old house flowing on, even if
only a trickle. Sweet for my father still
cute in his little boy cap and suspenders
who forgets himself and looks up
at your porch when getting his morning mail,
expecting you to wave. Sweet for my mother
humming by her chimney, who really burns the brush
because you cut it with your own hands.
(Someday they will join you in the warm earth
of the little hill, all good company.)

Sweet for a John David, who looks like his father.
On down the road: sweet for your mother, who will never
scream that way again. Sweet for your father who still can’t go
where you lie, amber quiet now.

You are always the song, even still,
so when he is ready, as he grows near,
may his slow but firm steps,
and echoes of the many others’,
sound to you not like grief
but like a dance.

Note: David Kazee directed music at both the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg and the First Baptist Church in Salyersville. He built and ran single-handedly a music studio at his home on Mash Fork Road, in Salyersville, where he recorded music for people across the nation. He was a devout Christian who taught music to many young people, giving them positive things to strive for. His death is a loss to not only the region, but far beyond.

Melanie Culbertson, a Salyersville native living in Louisville, is assistant professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College in Sellersburg, Indiana. She also teaches as an adjunct instructor at Spalding University in Louisville and formerly taught at the University of Evansville, Indiana. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing at Indiana University and has published fiction in The American Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Puerto del Sol, The Louisville Review, and others. She was nominated for two national Pushcart Prizes.

When Pap died,
we ate fried chicken after the funeral.
I sat and had a biscuit,
wanting silence
      and a shower
to wash away the germs
death had brought,
cemetery dirt caked thick
on the bottoms of my black-heeled shoes.
It was January cold,
and all I could do
was freeze.

Maybe we’ve come from twelve steps away –
the absence of cold hands and hearts
to push us from that uppermost ledge:
the leap is fatal.
The stay likewise deadly
in its promise of always being.
Maybe you and I are worth all the licks
a white envelope can manage
before the back starts to tarnish –
maybe there can be a train, all that sappy jazz,
and be a day for stopping.
Or maybe we’re not.
Maybe we’re only admirable
as are the silent contents of a cold, hard, unlaminated drawer.
There, forgotten, but fresh in every feature
if remembered again.

Brittany Frasure, of Paintsville, a BSCTC alumnus, is now a student at the University of Pikeville.

Sleeping with sick
alters what’s within grasp
like valleys where trees grow in sand.
Pillows of powder seep through
the waters of my brain, and the effect
is offensive, gritty,
only a delay of already dwindling parts,
which will come to carry
my stride from its strain.
Sometimes I wonder
if life has really been worth
all the breathing
in and out.

Brittany Frasure, of Paintsville, a BSCTC alumnus, is now a student at the University of Pikeville.

Past the red barn
With its chipped paint
And rusty hinges,
Sits an old man.
His hair grayed,
Skin wrinkled by time,
Rocking in his chair
Looking out over the meadow.
“Could you please tell me, sir,
how do we forget?”
“What you need to forget,
You’ve already forgotten.
And what you can’t forget,
Be thankful, cause it’s sticking around for a reason.”

Sheila Gollihue, of Martha, is a KCTCS student; her writing has been published in Kudzu, Hazard CTC’s literary journal.

What is love?
      Who knows?
The river knows.
      How does the river know?
The river knows
with her calm and peaceful song.
A lullaby to the lovers.
      How else does the river know?
The river knows
With her quick rapids and rushing waters
To warn of the bumpy roads ahead.
      How does the river know?
When her stream connects with another
And they stay together until they reach the end of their journey.
      What is love?
The river knows.

Sheila Gollihue, of Martha, is a KCTCS student; her writing has been published in Kudzu, Hazard CTC’s literary journal.

Silently observing the world as life passes by
Hoping to experience the rush one day
Even though living is living, no matter how dull.
In a fast-paced world where
Lights and colors flash before you
She hears the cries of the captive girl.
Smoking again, put it to the lips
Hear the burning paper sizzle
Each time she takes a drag
Imagine being free
Longing for the want
And the addicted girl shudders in a corner.

Sheila Gollihue, of Martha, is a KCTCS student; her writing has been published in Kudzu, Hazard CTC’s literary journal.

Running fingers down earth-worn bark,
the edges and bumps smooth
from years of rain and sun and snow,
you can feel the age of the tree
in your fingertips
like the wrinkles of a man
in the last throws of life.
Memories are carved into the skin,
every joy and sorrow etched
into the body. Like a carpenter, time
shapes us into something that bears
the brunt of the years. Into something
that is at once a tell-tale sign of what we are,
where we’ve been, and what we could become.

Ashton Johnson writes, “It hasn’t been until the last three years that I have found myself actually writing as I have been more into art all my life. As anyone who takes up a pen will know, the first few things he or she writes are always the hardest, but I’ve come to find my niche. I write about whatever inspires me at the time, be it a song, a painting, or anything in between.”

I remember how cherished those times
should have been, sun-filled days when I ran

through the ankle-high grass with dogs
barking at my heels and made wishes

on dandelions. Nights with cats curling
to sleep beside me in a cocoon of blankets

under a moon that was always rising.
I wonder over times passed, a dream

that no longer makes any sense to me
as the world moves ever, ever, ever on.

Ashton Johnson writes, “It hasn’t been until the last three years that I have found myself actually writing as I have been more into art all my life. As anyone who takes up a pen will know, the first few things he or she writes are always the hardest, but I’ve come to find my niche. I write about whatever inspires me at the time, be it a song, a painting, or anything in between."

The forgiveness of empty bowls should have gone
But the things were added and the heat applied
Crucible remnants along the re-enactors trail

The smoke of colors
The burnt sienna residue
Shaped into a shadow
Draping down the walls at sunset
And running through the market streets

The vanilla folder
Pacifically sounding of dialect and spoke day by day
Resonating with the bell chants of ideals
Like prayer when one wears what one has fashioned

William Loftus is Professor of Psychology at Big Sandy Community & Technical College.

I am buried alive within these four walls,
a one-bedroom tomb,
drowning in a never-ending sea of blue static
emitted from my television screen.
I haven't felt anything in days
except for the blessed narcotic caress
of loving ethanol arms that wrap me
up, safe from my own disaster.
Upstairs a girl of thirteen is tap-dancing
on my ceiling. She might as well be dancing
on my grave.

BSCTC student Kalen Ousley, of Prestonsburg, names H. P. Lovecraft as a strong influence on his writing.

No one knows us here.
I’ve wanted for a long time to find the right place –

the place to give all my secrets away
without worries of what those around me think.

It’s time to let it go.

I can finally be who I really am here
with no critic who claims to be my friend:

Walking out the door felt beyond awesome.
We accelerated down Everhard Road to our room.

It’s ten minutes until midnight.
You are the cure to this sickness.

I’ve never felt so good than when you smile –
The windows are down, my heart is racing;

Girl, you work like a drug, running, kicking,
screaming on the inside. I feel on top of the world

and this could be my last breath. We have the music
up loud and the night is ours.

Adam Preece is currently a BSCTC student and plans to further his career in broadcasting.

Hot July sun beatin' down on our heads
Salty sweat stingin' our eyes
Hikin' to the top of the hill with ten-quart water buckets in tow
The top of the hill where the sweetest and biggest berries grow

Dad Mom big sister and me trudgin’
along the dusty road with a common goal:
Pick our buckets full and hurry home.
Big sister complaining every step of the way

Fingers throbbin’ stained with berry juice
Mingled with blood oozin’
from tiny pricks by angry briars
Without which the reward wouldn't be as sweet

Mouths dry from heat and thirst
Quenched with water
Warm as pee
shared from a mason jar

Buckets finally full and bellies growlin’
We begin the long walk home--steps quicken
With thoughts of fresh blackberry jam,
Butter newly-churned and hot, and cathead biscuits.

Darlene Profitt, an insurance agent in Prestonsburg, earned her Associate in Arts Degree from Big Sandy Community & Technical College. She has been married to her wonderful husband for 40 years and has four great children. She enjoys hiking, bowling, movies, and reading.

There is an assurance that comes with sitting in the yard
Listening to the familiar sound of a lawn being mowed nearby.
There is an assurance in the familiarity of sameness.
Of being enveloped by the same hollowed hands of hallowed hills.
Of knowing the history of a place,
Of closing your eyes and remembering the faces of neighbors
Who have slipped away quietly, almost unnoticed.
There is an assurance in all that.

There is a great wealth that comes
With the friendship of faithful dogs and the antics of young kittens
And the sun – craving, eyes – closed stillness of old cats.
There is a bond of solidarity with life and living and the earth and the sky
And people and this place and all places and with God
And with the parts within the whole that happens around us
As the present fades into whatever the past is (or was).

Each moment brings a new perspective.
No two moments are the same
Just like flakes of snow or drops of rain or people or blades of grass.
All I can see seems prepared to end well by fulfilling its purpose
Of the assurance of sameness
While I sit here in the yard.

David Profitt, retired from 35 years of service in the pastoral ministry, has taught Philosophy and Religion at Big Sandy since 2004. He has written poetry and essays for over 40 years. He and his wife Darlene have four children.

Thus breaks the dawn
with fog and mist and
the shadows of trees with spider branches
not yet turned green by summer.
There is a peace at dawn
that burns away quickly;
like the fog, it rises
Like the mist of the morning
it blows away.
Nature rouses herself.
God wakes His creation.
The world bears down.
The moment is gone.
But in the solitude at the dawning of the day,
stillness and silence reign
and with them comes peace.

David Profitt, retired from 35 years of service in the pastoral ministry, has taught Philosophy and Religion at Big Sandy since 2004. He has written poetry and essays for over 40 years. He and his wife Darlene have four children.

Here’s my father’s hero
with Anne Bancroft in Nightfall,
1957, battling the fierce blizzard,
only to have the precious bag
of stolen money taken from him
by the night and the wind.
As I walk home from the revival theater
in the sleet and rain, I imagine myself
to be Ray. With my umbrella in hand,
I tap every frozen car parked
on the street because the past
is like a bowling ball poised
on the tip of a screwdriver.
Some square noir tough guy’s got
to make it fall. I might as well try.

Tim Skeen, author of Kentucky Swami, teaches creative writing at California State University, Fresno.

The flea market’s set up
in the Foodland parking lot.
A woman reclines on a lawn

chair under a pickup tailgate.
Her husband watches
over a velvet Elvis, really,

which leans against a tire.
In the background,
the mountains are covered

with trees thick as hair on a
squirrel’s back.  It’s as if their house
must be like a giant sifter,

moving back and forth,
and all that settles
in the basement is for sale.

Tim Skeen, author of Kentucky Swami, teaches creative writing at California State University, Fresno.

If I were to return to Earth as a vehicle, I would ask God to let me be a Jeep.
I would be at my best with my motor below 2,000 rpm’s,
Moving slowly as along a curving mountain state park road
With a view of lake and sky to my right
And woods and deer to my left.

My horn would blare,
“Lord I want to do what You’d have me to do/
Lord I want to be what You’d have me to be,”
And my tires would sound like knobby tread bike tires
Humming on blacktop.

That was when I was a child.
As a Jeep I could be childlike again.
I could climb hills as before
Without a care about falling—
About descending (I could lock in four-wheel drive and gear ‘er down.)

Or I could spin circles on pavement,
Leaving black marks of rubber
From all four tires.
Someone would later come by to see my circles
And to subconsciously store them away

For that night’s dream.
You know, the way we record
Subjects for our dreams
There somewhere behind the more significant day’s events
In an old curved-top trunk where they call, “Dream me, dream me,” after dark.

In that dream I could provide
A slow Jeep ride on a north/south seaside highway
With a view of ocean waves, gulls, and eternity to the right
And to the left a mountain view of lake, woods, deer, and immortal memories.
After all, we’re dreaming here; I am a Jeep for God’s sake.

Ken Slone’s poetry collection At Home in the Mountains was published in 2001 by the Jesse Stuart Foundation. Mountain Teacher – An Eastern Kentucky Teacher Tells His Story, an autobiography including stories about teaching nontraditional students, poems, and teaching methods, was published by JSF in 2005. His poems appeared in Coal – A Poetry Anthology. After earning his graduate degree from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH, he returned home to Johnson County, where he lives today with his wife, Debbie. A retired Professor of English at Big Sandy Community & Technical College, Ken received the Great Teacher Award in 1999 for teaching his students to take pride in their Appalachian heritage and to write from their hearts.

Like an old guitar
Been played too long without the restringing
And bridge adjusting, saddle lowering
Setup needed.
Been uncased and rested on mahogany back

So that tuning keys have been
Knocked a kilter.
Have not been in tune for years now.
There is dust on my body and neck
Beneath strings that have no rust but no longer the brilliance of shine.

A thin crack is forming behind the bridge
And extending to the trim band near the electronics plug-in.
It is from the stress of amateur tuning
An octave above normal.
It is also from the dampening and drying of the seasons

Because it’s been in the mountains
Where in woods there is high humidity in summer
Then the shock of dry air of winter
With no thought of humidification.
Been strummed with makeshift picks

By people indifferent
To learning to play well.
When asked whose music they like to read,
Or which NPR station they listen to, or whether they know Garrison,
They are without interest

Because they are too starved for music
To know that’s what they are.
Been picked up carelessly
And strummed on by too many
Who couldn’t care less.

Would like to make it to the stage some day
And to be tuned and played by one who knows the music by ear.
When the show is over, no need for flamboyant guitar smashing,
Would like to be gently placed in a purple plush hard-shell Martin case
And taken to my new home.

Ken Slone’s poetry collection At Home in the Mountains was published in 2001 by the Jesse Stuart Foundation. Mountain Teacher – An Eastern Kentucky Teacher Tells His Story, an autobiography including stories about teaching nontraditional students, poems, and teaching methods, was published by JSF in 2005. His poems appeared in Coal – A Poetry Anthology. After earning his graduate degree from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH, he returned home to Johnson County, where he lives today with his wife, Debbie. A retired Professor of English at Big Sandy Community & Technical College, Ken received the Great Teacher Award in 1999 for teaching his students to take pride in their Appalachian heritage and to write from their hearts.

I.

Land of the free, home of the brave, valley of the oppressed.
We are America.
I am America.

We are shadows on the wall, desert casinos, and fire starters.
We are petroleum guzzlers, media magnets, and beach side carousels.
We are Hollywood phonies, Cape Cod cronies, and Malibu yuppies.
We are Chicago intellectuals, Detroit dope pushers, and cross dressin shims bragging and fagging around North Beach.
We are Wall Street bullies, Haight Street hippies, Seattle punks, and backwoods bible thumpers.
We are miles of mid-western wheat fields, with nothing but the creak of a lonely windmill.
We are north pacific showers that drowned out the sound of day.
We are fatherless children in Hell’s Kitchen, sitting in the corner of our section eight world.
We are the country music singer, the Fifth Amendment pleader, and the small town drunk.
We live to rape the earth.
We are America.
I am America.

II.

We are social leftists, greedy pretenders, and free market pricks.
We are Massachusetts liberals, Texas conservatives, and Louisiana greens.
We are concrete columns, picket fences, and country churches.
We are wealthy investors, middle class nobodies, and street bums, forced to roll the dice.
We are helpless single mothers, bipolar romantics, and space cadets that fill their veins with junk.
We are military personal that would spill their blood for freedom.
We are gothic yups that would drink the blood for pleasure.
We are the victors of two World Wars.
We have left many towns and souls in ruin.
We smile at this.
We are General Motors, General Electric, and General of the world’s army.
We are John D. Rockefeller, Ray Kroc, and Henry Ford.
We are America.
I am America.

III.

We are the Upper Class, Corporate Class, Middle, Working and Lower Class.
We are the living, breathing, searching, dying melting pot of the world…
We are rebels, Yankees, and west coast pioneers searching for gold.
We are small business owners, disabled veterans, and laid off factory workers.
We breathe life into the world’s economy and let it walk a tight rope our savings are gambled.
We choose freely our moral standards and then pay taxes and go to sleep.
We are both Jekyll and Hyde.
We unite and we divide.
We are endless books, endless homicides, and an endless contributor to the weight of this planet.
We are the six o’clock news, damp southern humidity, and the poor painter’s wet dream.
We are Playboy, The Grapes of Wrath, and The New York Times.
We are America.
I am America.

IV.

We are Christians… Fundamentalists, literalists, visionaries, and hypocrites.
Catholicism, Calvinism, non-denominational sects, and old fashioned Martin Luther Protestants.
We are Zen lunatics, Jewish jackrabbits, and Muslims named Ali, Rahim, or Rahuf.
We are new age, scientology, and eastern world wannabees.
We raise our hands in church, use aroma therapy, and feed our hungry superstitions.
We worship in 21st century temples, on top of Mt. Shasta, and in double-wide trailers.
We are stone cold atheists, scared shitless agnostics, and philosophica gurus of another time and place.
We are simple minded children and troubled thinkers.
We are the wise and the foolish.
We are corporate bigots, county politicians, and intuitive surrealists that can connect both time and space.
We are death row inmates, guilt-stricken sexual deviants, and a stack of paperwork on the sheriff’s desk.
We are living, breathing representations of the static human state.
We are America.
I am America.

V.

We are hungry consumers, television zombies, and pop culture puppets.
We are manipulated by the mainstream and controlled by the almighty dollar.
We fall in line as the god-forsaken gatekeepers tell us what is newsworthy.
We borrow great sums of money and carry the debt on our broken backs.
We are a product of prosperity, a tombstone with no name, and a symbol on a hill.
We are Rocky Mountain wind, warm Kentucky bourbon, and a pharmaceutical machine.
We are the skeletons that cancer leaves behind and the obesity that Jenny Craig pushes forward.
We are motivated by what we fear and those in whom we elect are aware of this.
We sit in the dark watching reruns, eating chocolate, and praying for a soul mate.
We are the Saviors of the Middle East, carrying the torch of democracy.
By 2020 we will have forced freedom on you.
We are America.
I am America.

VI.

We are the George Washingtons, Abraham Lincolns, and Franklin Delano Roosevelts.
We are the John Wilkes Booths, Charles Guiteaus, and Lee Harvey Oswalds.
We are the Battle at Bunker Hill, the Boston Tea Party, and John Brown’s Raid.
We are the peace and hope of Martin Luther King, and we are the bitter sick mind of Ted Bundy.
We are the humiliation at the Bay of Pigs, and we are the starving children of the 1930s.
We are the charisma of Elvis Presley and we are the improvisation of Miles Davis.
We are the Jim Crow laws and we are 1964.
We are the uprooted Jack Kerouacs and we are the homebody Emily Dickinsons.
We are the bread and the butter.
We are the cornfields of Iowa.
We are the Mississippi River.
We are the foothills of the Appalachians.
We are America.
I am America.

VII.

As I reflect on what I’ve been given and what I’ve lost, I hold a weightless body close to me at night.
She, too, is America.
A body I could not forsake, serving a God I cannot deny.
People describe America as a new nation, but this is inaccurate.
America is ancient.
America rested in the palm of the earth before the Pacific Ocean and before the dawning of man.
As I lay sleeping I dream of nights in Brooklyn allies, and in San Francisco cafés.
I can still hear the ruckus and smell the beer in North Carolina barrooms.
This is my country.
I am this country.
As my mind changes, my skin changes, and my body changes.
America changes as well, but she still sleeps in 1776.
That is where I find her every morning.
Beside me.
Looking into my eyes, breathing on my face, and telling me
to wake up and be somebody on this outstretched plank of life I call home.

Matthew Smith received his B.S. and M.A. from East Tennessee State University.  He teaches Sociology and serves as Coordinator of the Honors Program at BSCTC.

‘Tis so sweet
to break bread with strangers
burning with a new light
‘twas never known before
howling into the lost night
and drinking from the vine
we pass this bread so divine.
We do not agree
yet we do not argue.
We simply learn from one another.
Antagonists become friends.
The dead become converts.
Strangers become comrades
as night dances into morning
laughter climbs the walls at sunrise
and I’ve learned to listen
somehow discovering myself within myself.
Making love to conversation
and caressing the deep blue nothingness of it all.
Where would I be tonight
had I not broken bread with a stranger?

Matthew Smith received his B.S. and M.A. from East Tennessee State University.  He teaches Sociology and serves as Coordinator of the Honors Program at BSCTC.

Be the man who drinks from the Holy fountain.
Be the woman who changes the world.
Walk through walls of broken reveries
and turn night’s curtains toward the sun.
Your feet will find their way back to Appalachia.
In the meantime, drink wine with the farmhands in Monpazier.
Frequent the merciless streets of Manila.
Praise God for creating the riddle
and praise Jesus for explaining it.
Tell your parents that you are not like them
and Lord willing, never will be.
Republicans and Democrats will soon perish
but Independents shall inherit the earth.
Never curse your empty pockets.
Stamp your soul on every human footstep.
Most of all, dear friend, you must learn to love.
Love those who slaughter your precious ideologies
only to trade them on the black market for common sense.
Load the chamber, and then hand the gun to your enemy…
Let him patiently watch you walk through bullets and nightmares.
You will survive.
Tomorrow is Thursday.
Your eyes will see the light of day.

Matthew Smith received his B.S. and M.A. from East Tennessee State University.  He teaches Sociology and serves as Coordinator of the Honors Program at BSCTC.

A painted pastiche to be placed in the last Isle of Innisfree

What style and grace be seen in a humble peace and tranquility.
Free your mind to a lilac breeze and see my true hypocritical capacities.
Known will be the vertigo of a bumblebee and how it would to be – just a bee.
For E-pit-o-mE, this place my home, and in crevice, laments, made heart into stone, my Kentucky home. In crevice, laments, where the moss had grown.

Before the war, a winter’s snow, fairies lived here once – you know.
Seelie danced beneath the thumbnail, harvest moon and sang songs of labors ardor. Oh! What a celestial spring, voices in sync, but doves lay at rest in vacant hours;
Do the mystic powers sleep? Father time does blow and has blown year’s good-bye.
Baby New Year had a submerged spirit with galvanized notions. There’s no authenticity.

We are the current in the sea of synchronicities, causing ripples in the searching for something to make us happy. But the treasure trove has been locked since antiquity.
and Mother Earth is still key, raped red from relinquished endowments at hands of idolatry.
My fellow Mysterions, adept to verities, inherent to The Sophia and Socrates;
Redeem those who suffered for sanity. Futurists have an opposing psalm.

Those Argonauts are thought pure, but young blood, young blood will endure.
Drink from a fountain of truth, and you will see. You are an-o-mie.
For no apostate, laughing Gnostic can turn patina into the perfect hue of blue.

Rebecca Smith, of Hueysville, is a student at BSCTC.