Birthed from Scorched Hearts

Today Malaprop's bookstore offers readings by some of the writers included in the anthology below. I was unable to attend because of what around here we call "the Cullowhee crud."





FULCRUM PUBLISHING
Binding Information: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-55591-665-7
Pages: 376
Size: 6" X 9" X .875"
In stock
$16.95
www.fulcrum-books.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=6007 - 26k




(MariJo Moore)
---------------------------------

Several months ago MariJo emailed me about an anthology she was putting together, a gathering of women's voices about war. She asked if I had anything to send her. I thought and thought. I had a sequence of sonnets spun off from the still-ongoing battle over displaying the Confederate flag in the deep South and some of my childhood memories of the Civil Rights battles that took place just miles from my home. But that had already been published in "Callaloo." Then I remembered a sequence I had begun in response to Ron Rash's "Shelton Laurel" in a recent ASHEVILLE POETRY REVIEW. In it the speaker addresses his sister about the atrocities he has seen and of which he has been a part during the Civil War massacres in the mountains. I woke up next morning with the sister responding. I sent the sequence to Marijo. She wanted it!

Now I find that it shares company with work by writers Eavan Boland, Linda Hogan, Glenis Redmond, Emöke B’Rácz, Paula Gunn Allen, and an impressive chorus of other women's voices. In addition to Redmond and B’Rácz, North Carolina is also respresented by Laura Hope-Gill, H. Byron Ballard, Ellenburg, Paula Popow Oliver, Margaret Abruzzi, Marjorie Hudson, and Cheryl Dietrich.


And the miraculous comes so close
to the ruined, dirty houses-
something not known to anyone at all,
but wild in our breast for centuries.
-Anna Akhmatova, 1921


And now, here is the poem I woke up to after reading Ron Rash's "Shelton Laurel."

Shelton Laurel Diary

“A branch runs through this cavern, in it trout
whose eyes are blind from years of too much dark.
I envy them for all they haven’t seen,
and maybe with enough time I might too
cease to see these things I tell you of...”

Ron Rash, Shelton Laurel


I dreamed you wrote a letter
to me, grimy-fingered in
the glow of some dream cave, holed
up like wolf or bear. Your nib
scratched over wrinkled paper,
blood-stained, was it? Yes, I saw
it clearly for a moment,
fading though it was, as fading
you were in the light. How did
we come to this? Against each
other. Other side of creek.
Or ridge. Against, against. It tries
my fortitude, this war. Recall
that pair of overalls you
gave me, unbeknownst to our
strict father, saying, now you too
can crawl the laurel hells and
climb the rockface with the rest
of us? I did. I keep them near
to feel the earth they crawled,
the thorns they bore, worn down
to flesh itself through trailing
you. I almost drew them on
to track you into battle,
joining boys out in the front
lines, fight as hard as they. You know
I could. Where are you, Brother?
And why hide from me? I fear
you’ve crawled into some hell
more hellish than our laurel
can be for a stranger who
has lost his way in these parts.
Yes, I dreamed the letter you left
on my pillow, yet I do not
dream I wake. I know I have
awakened. And I know you
wait in darkness, as I see now
dawn begin to creep above
the fog in Shelton Laurel.

Kathryn Stripling Byer