Hundreds of writers across the Commonwealth (and beyond) shared their literary talents with Kentucky Monthly in the hopes of being featured in our 9th Annual Writers’ Showcase. The following winning works of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry are highlighted in our February 2017 issue.
POETRY
Joseph Anthony // Lexington
Dennis L. Brewer // Richmond
Katie Caswell // Louisville
Leanne Edelen // Louisville
Chad Horn // Harrodsburg
Libby Falk Jones // Berea
Ellen Birkett Morris // Louisville
Jim Shields // Lexington
Karen M. Weber // Erlanger
FICTION
Linda S. Prather // Lexington
NONFICTION
Diantha Daniels // Martin
Anthony Stallard // Lexington
POETRY
These Are Not My Hills
These are not my hills:
These rugged, ancient sentinels of earth and stone,
armored with maple, walnut, oak, hickory, pine and spruce
These are not my hills.
These are the hills of my father and his fathers before him.
These are not my hills:
These hills which cast dark, cooling shadows upon
nameless hollows and creeks that follow serpent’s winding trail
These are not my hills.
These are the hills of my mother and her mother’s before her.
These are not my hills:
These hills that cradle in their laps
Rising Spring fog and lingering Summer mist.
These are not my hills.
These are the hills of my children and my children’s children.
These are not my hills:
These brooding, nurturing hills joined hip to hip
as a sanctuary for animal and fowl in an endless march.
These are not my hills:
But I belong to them in thought and fleshly heart.
Dennis L. Brewer
Contrary Connor
“Young man, if I ask you something you must truthfully reply.”
Connor’s Dad said regarding his most recent lie.
“You may not say things like the sky is orange when it is really blue.
You will find yourself grounded until you can say what is true.”
Connor retired to his room and laid upon his bed
His father’s words playing over and over in his head.
His eyes grew heavy and slowly started to close
Drifting into a dream as he slipped silently in a doze.
Connor imagined a world where right was wrong,
weak was strong,
Old was new,
and false was true.
His mind’s eye saw so many things in contradiction.
A mid-day moon hung high in the sun’s position.
Dogs were out taking their owners for a stroll.
While fish caught their dinner with a hook and pole.
Grown-ups frolicked in delight on the playground at the park
as children sat on benches watching with envious eyes full of snark
Cars floated past,
turtles ran fast,
Pigs said moo
And hiccups ah-chooed.
Connor decided that he liked this contrary surprising scene.
That is until he heard the man’s blood curdling scream.
He spun around to find the cause of the monstrous shriek.
And what he saw made his stomach fall and his knees get weak.
A father and son next to each other but not embraced in a hug.
Instead bellowing a painful howl at one another to show love.
To Connor, this behavior looked not just odd but bizarre.
His hugs and closeness with his Dad were his favorite, by far.
He could not trade them for a cold loud scream.
The thought of which made him eager to leave this world of dream.
Connor willed his eyes open and gazed upon his room.
He missed his Dad and urgently needed to find him soon.
Searching through the house with tears streaming down his face
He found his Dad, who gathered him up in a loving embrace.
“I will not lie again.” Connor sobbed. “I will only say what is real.”
He knew why now that a world full of contradiction is not ideal.
Leanne Edelen // Louisville
I Could Be From Here
I’m from a little Republican town
in South New Jersey,
Born in Camden.
But I could be from here.
I grew up on 7th avenue, the poor Democratic,
Catholic part
of a Protestant town.
But I could be from here.
I spent my twenties poor in Manhattan,
and then in 1980
migrated to Perry County
where people all knew where you were from.
They did the county dance
when they met people from Knox,
or Breathitt or even down
in Clark or Bourbon.
They figured out how
they were connected
pretty quick.
But I got puzzled glances.
“Who’s your daddy?”
My daddy ain’t from here,
but he could have been.
He was working class, just like you.
Not a Baptist, though.
I found a little hilltop church with Father Rock
and people stopped asking me
where I was from
the fifth year we lived in our mountain home,
right across from Glomawr.
They knew we weren’t native
but they had gotten used to our faces.
Our sixth year, though, we moved to Lexington,
and I started buying old photos at yard sales.
Everyone had ancestors
and I wanted some, too.
It’s been thirty years and people
only occasionally ask
where I’m from.
Well here, I tell them.
At least I could be.
Joseph Anthony // Lexington
What Broke My Heart
It was the sparseness of your cabin. The slanted porch and wood gone grey. Your tiny kitchen with one clean pot set on the stove. The small bedroom with the iron frame bed I was sure you inherited from your grandmother. It was the bottomland that made up your farm alongside the river. The God willin’ and the creek don’t rise hopefulness of it all. The small patch of zinnias that you picked to put in our baskets each week. It was the story you told me while we stood by your truck of a strict father who didn’t let you go to the movies, at least not the ones you wanted to see. Your worn shoe peeking out from the bottom of your jeans. The sight of your back under your thin t-shirt as you unloaded bushel baskets from your truck. It was your marriage to a woman who bought vegetables from you, and how I asked at the year-end party where she was and you said I don’t know, as if she just vanished one night, leaving you a sky full of stars but no moon in sight. It was the picture of you, your shirt off, young and strong, your heart still in tact.
Ellen Birkett Morris // Louisville
This poem appeared in Surrender and The Revivalist.
Then Dream
No limit to how far we’d go
If simply dreaming made it so.
Dreams lighten hearts of every age …
Play make believe upon life’s stage.
So often dreamers help us see
Things hidden by reality.
With gentle brush strokes bold and bright,
They tease the darkness from the light.
Jim Shields // Lexington
On the Mountain, August
You don’t need to come here
unless you love blue mushrooms
shining in dark leaves,
blueberry bushes standing tall,
the hum of hornets.
You don’t need to come here
unless you love silence
and rain,
love the whip of wet grasses
on your bare legs.
love drinking water
from a hidden spring.
You don’t need to come here
unless you love dark nights
where your inner eye opens
and you dream
in all the colors of wildflowers.
You don’t need to come here
unless you love yourself
and your forebears and family
who’ve made you,
whom you make new.
You don’t need to come here
unless you love time,
want to fill your blueberry pail
with minutes,
never pick them all.
Libby Falk Jones // Berea
Bigfoot Takes a Back Seat to Bluegrass Back-Road Bozos
Kentucky roadsides are littered with clowns
standing statuesque, eerily costumed
glowing grease-paint outlines sadistic frowns
overly-sweaty and underly-groomed
bloated guts from cotton-candy consumed
torn tights, gowns agape, (overexposes)
death-like stares, as if recently exhumed
red beady eyes, even redder noses
sound of sweet circus song decomposes
clown-gowns adorned with sick, wilted flowers
sometimes seen striking demonic poses
goofy-gloved-juggling-superpowers
Jealous are Bigfoot, the deer, and raccoons-
Clowns stole their spot- (head)- light; Burst their balloons
Chad Horn // Harrodsburg
The Graduation Picture
Behold a smile like deep, clear water.
Unmuddied.
Unfiltered.
Inhaled joy of what life has to offer
Exhaled clarity of the embrace.
Karen M. Weber // Erlanger
fountain of youth
nearby in the plaza
a child twirls
ceremonious circles
under her dog’s leash:
spindly legs frolicking
bold and spontaneous.
tethered, the chihuahua wags its tail
at the excitement
the energy
the innocence.
gray sky above a babbling fountain:
dark clouds hold still
overhead, threatening;
still, the little girl in high tops
and polka dots
knows better –
fearless and frenetic
she spins in glory, dancing,
ponytail curls waltzing in the wind
boldly defying the weather and
making a spellbinding Sunlight
for all to see.
Katie Caswell // Louisville
NONFICTION
Fly
My first spring as principal at The David School, a mother sparrow chose to build her nest in the elbow of the gutter on the front porch. Really a brave—even foolhardy—thing for a bird to do, since this long, covered porch is a favorite hangout spot for our bunch of 35 rambunctious high school students before and after school and during the lunch break.
Even when the students are in class, it’s still noisy out in front of this wood-sided building that looks more like a hunting lodge than a 21st century school. For at this tiny non-traditional school nestled in the wooded hollows of eastern Kentucky, the principal still goes out onto the porch every 55 minutes to pull the rope that rings an old-fashioned school bell to signify the changing of classes. So you might argue that the location of this nest was safer than a conventional tree for keeping eggs safe from live predators, but it was certainly not a secluded spot for nurturing a family of young chicks into adulthood.
Nevertheless, a month later, it was obvious the number of our school’s “family of chicks” had officially increased by three. We’d first noticed mom flying back and forth with bits of yarn and straw for several days the end of March. Then a few weeks later, there were three tiny heads poking up out of the nest any time mama left it. Like our growing high school teens, these young birds, too, seemed to be always ready to eat something.
And then early one morning at the end of April, I was coming in to work and saw one of the chicks hopping around under the Adirondack chairs on the porch.
It couldn’t fly yet, but it was out of the nest. I went in quickly to alert my colleague, Jason. I should mention here that Jason is an Appalachian Kentucky native and a practical outdoorsman. I, on the other hand, while filled with good intentions, could best be described as an “outsider” (recently transplanted from 35 years in Indiana) and an idealistic city slicker.
“Should we put it back in the nest?” I asked with obvious concern.
He looked at me as if I had two heads. “It’ll either learn to fly,” he said without any emotion, “or else a snake’ll git it.”
That did it.
Now, I’d like to point out that one of the perks of being the principal of a small, nurturing school like this one is that, if I need something done, I can go to the gym where we have a bunch of healthy, strong high school students playing basketball every single morning before school, and I can ask a few folks to come give me a hand with a special project. So that’s exactly what I did—choosing to ignore Jason completely as he fell over laughing in the corner.
Of the three boys who volunteered for this special assignment, two were among those students most likely to give a teacher a hard time for almost any academic request. But a little “sparrow rescue?” They were totally cool with it. And at least when I was looking, they didn’t laugh at me. Not once.
We got a stepladder and went out to the porch. One of the boys carefully picked up the tiny feathered body, its heart beating wildly, and handed it to the other, who was perched on the ladder so he could reach up to set the little bird, still covered with black down, gently back in the nest.
But by the end of first period, not only was the first chick right back on the ground again, but the other two had followed. My guys knew what to do though. Yep, they went and got the stepladder and carefully picked each of the little chicks back up and gently returned them to the nest again.
Even if Jason was still doubled over.
Now, not only are our students are among those most likely to give a teacher a hard time, they also hunt and fish in their spare time. In other words, they understand and have deep respect for the “Circle of Life.” But they’re also good Kentucky country boys, which means they love and respect their mamas. And that includes their lady principals.
So, without complaint, in between classes, they put those little birds back in the nest three more times, until even I was willing to admit that their time to either make it or not had come.
I’m pleased to say that they all did make it—flying awkwardly and tentatively in shaky circles at first, but then gradually gaining confidence until they flew higher and higher and then away for good that afternoon. Even though I, too, understand the “Circle of Life,” I’d like to think that the extra support we gave them when they were still vulnerable enabled them all to avoid becoming prey for a snake instead.
Those three boys are all now “out of the nest,” too. James graduated in June, the first in his family to do so, and started at the community college this fall. Lucas has a semester to go, but he’s already in the process of enlisting in the U.S. Army. And Dakota didn’t quite finish with us, but, with our support, he passed his GED and has started a job in customer service.
Over the course of the last four years, I—and the rest of the staff at The David School—put each of those young men safely “back in the nest” numerous times. But now their time to either make it or not has come. I’d like to think that the extra support we gave them will enable them to avoid the pitfalls and dangers out there in the real world.
Fly, James.
Fly, Lucas.
Fly, Dakota.
Fly.
Diantha Daniels // Martin
FICTION
Lessons from the Sparrow
I pulled the faded green sweater closer around my thin shoulders and shivered slightly. I suspected Dr. Burgess had turned down the thermostat in hopes the cold would distract me from what he was saying. And I had to admit that it was working. “Did I ever tell you the story about the sparrow, Dr. Burgess?”
He sighed. “No, Ms. Carroll, you didn’t.”
I smiled at him across the desk as my thoughts wandered back seventy-two years.
***
“Mary Elizabeth!”
Mother’s voice was shrill, and she’d used both names. I was in deep trouble.
“What’d you do, Mary?” Jimmy Lee’s eyes widened. Like me, he knew both names meant Mom was really mad, not just stand-you-in-the-corner mad, but go-cut-me-a-switch mad.
Standing in the hallway outside my bedroom, I heard her mumble, “This child is going to be the death of me.”
“Oh, no,” I whispered glancing sideways at Jimmy Lee. “Bobber.”
Opening the door, I stepped inside, my gaze going to the shoe box in the middle of my bed. Mom stood on the opposite side, hands on her hips, eyes glaring and nostrils flaring. Her flaming red hair, much like my own, seemed to stand on end. I picked up the box and looked down at the tiny brown bird inside. His head bobbed up and down.
“He flew into the window,” I said, my own temper starting to rise. “We named him Bobber because his head keeps bobbing up and down. See?” I held out the box so she could look inside, believing that the sight of Bobber’s little head going up and down would melt her heart, as it had melted mine.
“Birds have lice, and they carry disease. Now you take that bird outside right this minute and bury it.”
“Mom, he isn’t dead!”
Mother jerked the bedspread from my rumpled bed. “Well, he’s almost dead. At the very least, he’s dying. It’d be a kind thing for you to do, Mary Elizabeth.”
“Would you bury me if I wasn’t dead, Mommy?” Jimmy Lee asked from the doorway, his face pale.
“Of course not, honey, but you’re not a bird.”
“God made the birds too, Mom!” I exclaimed, horrified that my own mother would contemplate such a thing.
Emotions flitter across her face: anger, frustration, and finally, acceptance. She couldn’t argue with God. “Okay, but get it out of your room.”
I grabbed Jimmy by the hand and headed outside. In the backyard, I went over to the hose and got some water. I placed drops of it along Bobber’s tiny beak.
“Can we take him to the vet, Mary?”
“I don’t think so, Jimmy. I don’t have enough money.”
“How much does it cost?”
“More than two dollars, and that’s all I’ve got.”
Jimmy stared into the box, a huge tear clinging to the edge of his eyelashes. “Gosh, that’s a lot.”
The bird’s tiny head continued to bob up and down as if he had a pounding headache. I could tell he was suffering.
“Mom’s right, you know. I should probably go ahead and kill him.” My voice quivered as hot tears ran down my cheeks.
Jimmy wiped at his own tears. “If I were a man, I’d do it for you.”
I hugged him. “I know you would.”
Forgetting about the lice and diseases, I picked up Bobber and held him in my hand. His head stopped bobbing. My closeness seemed to comfort him.
I sat down crossed legged on the grass. “You know the sparrow was the bird that stayed around Jesus when he was on the cross.”
Jimmy plopped down beside me. “Really?”
“Yep. This is a very special bird.”
Jimmy scooted closer and put an arm around my shoulders. “He likes it when you hold him.”
“It makes him feel better because he knows he’s not alone.” I stroked the small head. “Well, little bird, it’s up to you and God now. You have to choose. No one has the right to make that choice for you.”
Jimmy and I sat quietly for the next thirty minutes while I held Bobber until he stopped breathing. Then we buried him under the old oak tree in the front yard. We both felt good. Bobber didn’t die alone, and he made the decision, not us. That moment set the pace for the next seventy-two years of my life. I’d learned a lot from that little sparrow.
***
“Ms. Carroll?”
I reached across the desk and gently squeezed Dr. Burgess’s hand . He was such a nice young man. It seemed as though the doctors kept getting younger as I got older. And he was taking my illness so personally, almost as if it were somehow his fault.
“Ms. Carroll, did you hear what I said?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
Dr. Burgess stood and came around the desk. “Is there someone here with you?”
“My granddaughter, Mary Carol, is in the waiting room. She’s named after me, you know.”
“Would you mind waiting here just a minute? I’d like to talk with her.”
I listened as they whispered outside the door. He was afraid I hadn’t understood. I understood just fine. I was old, not senile. My cancer was growing at a rapid rate. I had maybe six months, no longer.
Mary Carol followed the doctor back into the office. “Grandma, are you ready to go home now?” She looked at me through teary eyes.
“Yes, I’d like that.” I grabbed my walker, stood, and started the slow process of making it out of the building and to the car.
Mary Carol was quiet during the short ride home. I knew she was hurting. Thinking about my death. My funeral. Well, I wasn’t dead yet.
“How’s art school?” I asked to break the silence.
“Oh, I don’t know, Grandma. I was thinking of dropping out and coming home. Maybe it was all just a dream. I mean, there are too many great artists out there already.”
“Did I ever tell you the story about the sparrow?”
Mary Carol grinned. “Yes, Grandma, you did. About a hundred times.”
“Well, Mary Carol, you remember it. Don’t you go burying things before they’re dead. Not dreams and not people. Life is everlasting. People die, and babies are born every day. Dreams never die unless you let them.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. For the first time, the true meaning of the story had come out for her. She pulled into the driveway, parked the car, and hugged me. “I won’t forget, Grandma. I promise.”
The old house looked comfortable. In my eighty years, I’d lived many dreams there. The sparrow had taught me never to bury anything before it died. I snorted remembering the doctor’s words. Six months, no longer. I made up my mind right then and there that I’d live at least eight months just to show him I could.
My gaze drifted to the ancient oak in the front yard. “Look, Mary Carol, the sparrows are nesting. We’ll have babies soon.”
Linda S. Prather // Lexington
Kentucky Light Show
Poetic invitations in silhouette on a side street in the sky. Backlit, still, and silent-lettered. Lines on the marquee of a memory. Shine’s Kentucky. No other takes me where the story is to what a film is all about on the landscape of its mystery.
It’s COOL Inside, there in my sheltered summer ‘50s shade.
The voice behind a smile beyond the circle in the glass above; a paper fragment offered for a coin or two emerges from a slot below. Showing Now’s exhibit ends abruptly at the Enter door. Beyond, an ever-changing weekly-blend of posters standing in the silence of their place behind their doors of glass in their homes of brass on the street of Attractions Coming Soon.
The ticket taker stands waiting with a hand out and a smile; a ticket, torn in two’s, more than a pass to find the big room. This will forever be a souvenir of not just any other day on its way to midnight. Stopping by to wish upon Refreshments at the counter there, then to the darkness of the big room where the arc of one’s now is waiting to be drawn.
Shadows play, dancing on and in-between soft folds on a velvet skin. Curtains parting, hidden secrets soon to be revealed told by pictures in a story. Light rushes, from a place I cannot see, to kiss a snow-filled window; a silent white, but for one moment more. The landscape of a mind’s imagination comes to life. Someone’s waiting to be charmed again.
Who will I be in what remains of the weekend? Jim Thorpe-All American, another searching to find a way away from imminent peril in When Worlds Collide, or escape from The Creature from the Black Lagoon or Invaders from Mars? John Wayne?
I could be anyone and that, forever more, more than enough.
A childhood world of echoes; from Hollywood, the soundstage sends its message. Warner Bros. social voice is anything but subtle. 20th Century Foxes listen for the lion’s roar. Columbia’s pretty lady in a silken gown holds a torch for someone, but not me. The globe of Universal’s international. RKO is in its day; Howard Hughes at play somewhere in his Culver City sandbox on Romaine St. in L.A. Republic; its cowboys and its good and bad. The gates of Paramount stand closed and far beyond my reach. B-movies, Widmark, Ryan, Mitchum, Russell and the light that is Marilyn. Starring and Co-starring; with Score and Music by and Color by, in Sound by someone. Filmed in something. Filmed at somewhere. Produced by and Directed by.
The picture show begins.
Light illuminates the darkness. Motion shapes the essence of the air. Beyond an open window to the message, what once stood still became unfrozen in a symphony of time, creatively composed. From out of somewhere on the darkness road, light danced frame to frame with others in the night. Light chasing light at the speed of everything; a Technicolor cloud, suspended on a stained-glass window to a sky beyond tomorrow.
Coming Attractions—Starting Friday
Matinees and cliffhangers;
Will the hero survive the fall in this my longest winter?
Pictures larger than life; life must surely be more than this. Life is larger than anything … isn’t it? Someone tell me. I am only ten. Time is standing on a corner on the street I know as Main. There’s seven years a teen to be, a promise of tomorrow. I’ve not seen the previews of attractions coming in a life, and that to me is frightening.
What am I left to be? How long would it take; to reconcile the Montgomery Clift or the Lawrence Harvey in me, or the James Dean-Natalie Wood uncertainty in a coming of my age?
What would become of my heroes?
In the darkness, no one can see inside my shy uncertainty. The big room will be there through my spring and summer, the autumn of October until the light show in it falls, like the last of leaves in a winter’s darkness, on their way to find their rest in time. All this I will know, before the song I knew is silent.
Anthony Stallard // Lexington
Reflections on the Kentucky Theater, then and now on Main Street in my hometown.