blue hue
worn thin with age,
soft and semi-see-through.
The loose skin of the leg
shielded by the layers of cloth
is the same.
Translucent and shimmering
like a clean, cotton sheet
in the spring sunlight
on the clothesline strung
between maple trees out back.
There’s a thick, curvy, muscled calf
built up by farming
family bottomland,
tenderized by age and hard work,
and finally gone to seed.
Somewhere above the skirt
and the housecoat
and the apron
and the swirl of color and texture—
somewhere far above the vines
of defined veins easy to trace
with a four-year-old fingertip—
there was a woman.
A tender woman
and a tender, twangy voice
drifting down to me.
Somewhere up there
there were watery blue eyes
and thick plastic glasses
with even thicker lenses.
And a loose white bun
hovered above those
with strands as thin and delicate
as spider silk, escaping
to brush across her wrinkled face.
I stand to receive the homemade
oatmeal cookie communion
she hands down to me.
Her pockets fill my vision and run over.
Slips of paper scribbled
with old-fashioned names
like Vangeline
and Isolene
and Iva
and Lovel.
Horehound candy and sticky peppermints,
white tufts of tissue paper
and the crinkly, plastic wrapper
protecting a plug of King B.
Her face is blurry
in my young memory
but her kitchen is as clear
as the strange shadows
on faded linoleum.
Shadows I liked to watch dance
as I slid across the room
dragging my butt over bumps
and sinkholes settled
into the floor
of an old house in Soldier.
Uncle Charlie Loves You
I remember tired, washed-out women
warning us young’uns
with his name—
“Uncle Charlie’s gonna come,
gonna come all the way
out here
just to get you.”
I remember we believed it.
I remember the good ol’ boys
rounding up a posse
fueled by boredom
and Pabst Blue Ribbon
every damn time
he went up for parole.
He might get out,
he might come home.
No-Name Maddox,
backwoods bastard,
progeny of a prostitute
with no paved streets to walk.
He could’ve been one of them,
with a Mamaw on Mauk Ridge.
Might’ve been another nobody
puffed up on Kentucky windage,
bedding high school girls
in the bed of a beat-up
pickup truck
saying,
“I don’t know
what somebody is.”
Or maybe
Uncle Charlie
could’ve been a country preacher.
A powerful, primitive Baptist
running the church house like a family.
A short feller filled
plumb up to the brim
with rural route righteousness,
briar-hopping the pulpit
instead of hitching to Haight-Ashbury.
The Holy Spirit in his wild eyes
instead of homicide.
I know
I hear Kentucky in his voice.
Hiding in the space
at the ends of words
where consonants drop off
and disappear.
Jump Rope Jitters
I’m still falling down.
Like when I was in fourth grade
and the worst in class at jumping rope.
I can still feel my little kid skin connect
with playground concrete
and see the bright red ribbons of blood
cutting a path to the cuff
of my ruffled pastel socks.
I can still feel loose gravel trapped
right below the surface.
Bits of rock worked their way out
and left rough skin behind.
I can hear the skim and skip
and my heart speeds up to keep up.
The matching scars on my knees itch
as I lie awake at night.
I know there’s no recess to dread tomorrow
and I should be drifting gently
toward a soft sleep, but my legs jerk
and my belly bubbles up with bad nerves
and somehow I’m still falling down.
Crying Mad