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The following poem from Anna Laura Reeve’s debut book of poetry, Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press), was a finalist for the Ron Rash Award and was first published in Broad River Review.   Flower Moon One way to light myself after darkness is toContinue Reading

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In Anna Laura Reeve’s 2023 debut collection Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press), readers will be transported from the domesticity of everyday life to the wonder of the flora and fauna in the balds of Southern Appalachia. Mothers will not be able to read the firstContinue Reading

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Hot blooded rose: its per- fumed crimson bed – boudoir for a drunk and dizzying bee amorous and swollen be fore it sped in grainy dark where the sun used to be. Pixilated grains materialize in the likeness of my mother, then ten, swaddling a rose with tenderest of eyesContinue Reading

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Many thanks to Appalachia Bare for offering to publish the poem “Little Margaret.” It’s about an old friend, the late James Elton “Jim” McMillan, Jr. While I was attending Emerson College in Boston in 1969-70, I lived in a house in Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, with Jim and his wifeContinue Reading

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Fatback frying in an old well-seasoned cast iron skillet soup beans bubbling Silver Queen corn with a plate of sliced tomatoes and onions on Mrs. Vashon’s table where we sit for hours as she tells stories of the past. Red Spruce trees swaying in the soft wind whispering secrets toContinue Reading

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Beneath yellow buckeyes and silver bells, we dip our feet in the cool rushing rapids as the Little Pigeon River’s clear flow bathes the large rocks that seem to tumble like fallen giants from the Chimney Tops. Around us are the cucumber magnolias, adopted into the diverse overstory of theContinue Reading

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Danita Dodson’s new book of poetry is called The Medicine Woods. If you recall, our Associate Editor, Edward Francisco reviewed her last book, Trailing the Azimuth. Her poems speak so easily to my heart, so I wanted to write the review for her new collection. In The Medicine Woods, herContinue Reading

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His breath is bad: cigarettes and agitated solitude. He stands outside his car excavating shrapnel from his hand, vestiges of a lawnmower blade sharpened cruelly, sparks taking revenge as metal glazed in splinters. The VA doctor, to whom he resents going, says he is lucky the constant picking has notContinue Reading

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Halfway up the mountain, just below the broken down garage where the tractor and the rusted truck were kept, in an interior dominated by grease, dust, patina and ageless imprint of mountain people generations removed from the old country, a young boy would sit in thunderstorms brought by Norse gods,Continue Reading

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I spy my love   along the ridge,   a silhouette   in shadows of black. I stand with my heart   a breakin’   ‘fore I fear   he’s not coming back. We were to be married   this autumn   but the war broke out   in June. With brothers at odds   in the fighting,   I fearContinue Reading