Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Appalachian Studies
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2014-12-31T11:00:00+00:00

Joel Peckham : Psalm 96

Sing to the Lord a new song—of men and women riding

the last bus home through quarries and yellowing

tobacco fields of Highway 421. Sing the long sigh

and slow grind of axels and tired eyes that watch

through glass the memory of Guthrie and Bluff Hills

and the Greenback Labor Party that never had a chance to

sing of strong arms and backs that broke in heat and boys

and girls who’d grow barefoot through stones and stagnant

water and bellies swole with hunger. Sing malaria, pellagra

and the scars that faded and the scars that didn’t. Sing

a new song from the old, the way things work their way

like hookworm up and in through cracks in the skin. Sing

their descendents up from the dust to work in Michigan

auto plants and down to dust again in mines of West Virginia.

Sing cornbread and potatoes. Sing food stamps and long lines

and the water shut-off notice on the door. Sing thirst and stink

and the boys signed up to fight through mustard gas and jungle,

the beaches of Europe and the Philippines, the deserts

of the Middle East. Sing of IEDs and what freedom really means

to empty bellies and an anger at everything. Sing of sand—

how it gets everywhere—hair, the pits of your arms, groin,

grinding away the skin—like hunger gets everywhere. How

sometimes the only thing to put in an empty hand is another

hand. Sing anger and lust and football on cold Friday nights—

the crush of bodies on bodies. Sing full-contact and sex

in muscle cars on back country roads and in the basements

and parking lots. Sing of children and more children. 99 cent

burgers and cold fries and grease that fills them. Sing the grease

that makes the stomach clamp. And single mothers who learned

from their mothers whose men were gone before they were gone,

even when they were there. Sing cosmetology school, beauty

school and the community college down the road. Because

you’re 50 years old and still trying, still singing—man gone,

kids trying to be gone and you stealing hours on the nursing home

computer where you work, wiping asses and cleaning bedpans

so you can take a night class on Gender Issues, so you can learn

words like patriarchy, hegemony, abject, subaltern. Sing

the privilege you’re supposed to have. Sing the spirit. Sing

to the Lord because the Lord is hope that maybe a new song

can rise, green and leafy, from a bitter soil. Sing because it’s all

you have—this life bound up in other lives before you

that matter because you say they do, you say you do

because you sing.

4: Home and Away

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.