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To view the most recent places from which we've have visitors, double click on the map. It will open a page to show you where most recent hits came from. Usually the past couple of days. The map only updates once a day, but the list updates every five minutes.

COFFEE WITH THE POETS

Coffee with the Poets is held in Hayesville, NC
the 4th Wednesday of each month, on the town square
at Phillips and Lloyd’s Book Store.

On March 26th, Linda M. Smith was the featured reader.
Michelle Keller coordinated the event. The audience was
made of Hayesville folks and some visitors from
Andrews and from across the Georgia line. Coffee,
tea, pastry, and poems --all delicious.

During the open mic session, award winning poet
Brenda Kay Ledford read a newly completed poem.

NCWN West Consultant, Nancy Simpson
read her most recently published poem,
“ The Ghost of Candide” which is dedicated to former
Georgia Poet Laureate, Bettie M. Sellers. Simpson
said the poem was written in 1978 and finally, after
30 years, it has found it’s home in print at
Cooweescoowee Review at Will Rogers University
in Oklahoma.

Glenda Barrett, whose chapbook, WHEN THE SAP RISES,
is forthcoming in June 2008 from Finishing Line Press,
also read one poem in the open mic reading,
as did Maren O. Mitchell and others.

Mark your calendar on the 4th Wednesday in April,
and come enjoy Coffee with the Poets. All practicing poets
are welcome to read a poem in the open mic reading.
Glenda Beall. NCWN West Program Coordinator is the
founder of this innovative program.

Comment problem noted

Some have tried to comment and have run into problems. I have made some adjustments and hopefully this will fix things. If not, send your comment to writerlady21@yahoo.com and I will post them for you.
Sorry about the problem.
Glenda

Betty Cloer Wallace comments on Carden's Tribute to Williams

Fine Tribute
I cannot imagine a greater tribute to the extraordinary Jonathan Williams than that by Gary Carden.

Williams enjoyed international renown as a literary man, visual artist, and small press publisher, but his friends and neighbors in Western North Carolina will always remember him as a person true to his humanistic vision and as one who fully understood and appreciated his Southern Appalachian roots. For those aspiring to communicate with and reach out to fellow human beings, one need look no further than the life and work of Jonathan Williams to see the artistic and literary trails one visionary person can break.

Carden's story of his birthday meeting with Williams is quite wonderful, and his "magpie" analogy for Williams is absolutely inspired. In fact, Carden himself is cut from the same cloth as Williams: creative in a wide range of media, resignedly irreverent about the changing world, and finely and lovingly attuned to the cultural vernacular of the Southern Appalachians. Like Williams, Carden has a pitch-perfect ear for mountain utterance, with the uncanny ability to pick out the real thing from amongst the fakes. Williams himself was known for writing creative obituaries (a lost art he lamented), and he would be absolutely delighted with Carden's tribute.

Betty Cloer Wallace
Franklin, NC

Write About Gifts

How is your writing going these days? Do you need a boost or inspiration to put your seat on the chair, stay there until you write somethng? In Blue Ridge Country magazine, Elizabeth Hunter, wrote an article about her students in a prison writing class. Elizabeth teaches Nature Writing at JCCFS and I admire her immensely. In fact I buy Blue Ridge Country just to read her column, On the Farm. Once Elizabeth gave me pure maple syrup, a product of her mother's trees in Vermont. I'd never been a fan of maple syrup until I tasted the real thing.

Elizabeth gave her prison students some prompts to engage their writing efforts. One student made a list of the gifts money can't buy. Have you thought of doing that? If you read his list it will certainly give you something to think about, maybe even right about.

Welcome World

This week I spent five days with eight wonderful writers. One of them, Jessica, set up a visitors map for this blog Thursday afternoon. I could click on the map and see not only how many visitors we'd had at the Netwest blog, but where those visitors were at the time they looked at Netwest Mountain Writers and Poets. The counter on the map began at the time it was downloaded. My students greeted me on Friday with the news that we had a visitor from Turkey check out our blog. Before the day was over we had more hits from far distant countries.
Then Saturday morning I decided to make some changes to the map and lost it along with the long list of places it had recorded in only two days.
However, tonight, thanks to Jessica, the map is back and will begin counting our visitors from this time forward.

A red dot on the map indicates the place from which our visitor hails. This morning before I lost the map, Mozambique was represented by a red dot on our map. Alas, now we have to start over and see if those far away visitors will return.

Gary Carden remembers Jonathan Williams

THE BARD OF SCALY MOUNTAIN

While I was surfing the internet last week, I stumbled on this: “Jonathan Williams, poet, dead at 79.” For a moment, I sat attempting to absorb the fact that tall, courtly Jonathan, was gone. Then, I immediately recalled my most cherished memory of the Bard of Scaly Mountain.

Over a decade ago when I was bemoaning the approach of my 64th birthday, two of my friends asked me what I wanted to celebrate my “natal day.” At the time, I was reading “The Ear in Bartram’s Tree,” and I quipped, “Jonathan Williams.” My friends laughed and I went back to my book. However, a few days later, when I drove to Mirror Lake Road in Highlands for my “birthday dinner,” I was ushered into a dining room, lit by candles. There were only two chairs at the table. In a few moments, there was a soft knock at the door and Jonathan Williams entered. I remember that he was all rumpled tweed and tousled hair and that he smiled and said, “Happy Birthday, Gary.” I gawked like a fool and my friends said, “Jonathan can only stay for two hours.” Then, they departed, leaving me with a great deal of food, several bottles of wine and Jonathan Williams.

And so we talked … or rather, Jonathan talked and I listened. I asked about Black Mountain College, his friendship with Henry Miller, his awesome folk/outsider art collection (which is now on loan to ASU), his publishing press (the Jargon Society) and his efforts to save Pasaquan, the fantastic “one-man paradise”of Eddie Owens Martin in Bueana Vista, Georgia. He told wonderful anecdotes about his trips down the back roads of America to find the multitudes of untrained artists who paint on cardboard, rusty tin and masonite, people who whittle, carve or make whirly-gigs – all compelled to create a personal vision that Jonathan found as deeply moving as a Degas or a Cezanne. Jonathan also loved baseball and the recipes in ‘White Trash Cooking” (published by Jargon Press). He was a discerning collector of blues recordings and the works of unknown photographers, such as Ralph Meatyard.

During our conversation, I noticed that Jonathan had a small notebook in his vest pocket, and that he occasionally made notes in it. When I asked about it, he said that he collected things other people said, and that he liked my comment about falling in love with the folksinger, Hedy West because “she had hairy legs.” Of course, I knew that he sometimes converted a chance remark that he had heard in a barber shop or a garage (“Your points is blue and your timing is off a week from Thursday.”) Several years after our conversation, I heard Jonathan read his poems in Asheville and was flattered to find a note that I had once written him transformed into a poem. As best as I remember, it went something like this:
“Report from Gary Carden at the Coffee Shop in Sylva.
A friend approached while I sat reading.
“What you reading, Gary?”
“Jonathan Williams,” I responded, holding up the book.
“Oh, that funny feller.”
“No, you’re thinking about Winters.
“Damn straight. It was down to 20 last night.”

After that night on Mirror Lake Road, we maintained an uncertain correspondence. Jonathan seemed resigned to both his own obscurity and the decline of all that was fine and good in America. He despised most modern poetry and felt that theatre had died with Tennessee Williams.
Although he continued to publish his own poetry, me seemed to devote the majority of his efforts to calling attention to the works of others. Occasionally, he would venture out for a reading and he often acted as a commentator for exhibits of his folk art collection. As for the recent popularity of folk art, he noted that the field had been taken over by money-grubbing opportunists and fakes. However, each time he found himself making grim observations about a world where bad food and deranged politicians held sway (Jesse Helms seemed to epitomize the worst in Southern culture!), Jonathan would suddenly change the subject, and retreating behind his shield of humor, laugh, quote a bit of doggerel and sing a song. As many of his later works attest, he was fond of addressing his dead friends, saying things like, “If there is a flight out of the Elysium Fields tonight, old friend, I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

Over the years, I have often searched for a fitting icon or symbol for Jonathan Williams. Aside from the undeniable merits of his poetry, his greatest gift was his amazing knack for perceiving talent in others. Whether it was Edgar Tolson, the carver in Compton, Kentucky; Vollis Simpson and his wind machines in Lucama, N. C. or the artist, James Harold Jennings down in Stokes County, Jonathan always saw what the rest of us missed. That includes the art critics who often made belated acknowledgements of Jonathan’s unerring judgment. Finally, I can pick my icon. Jonathan is a magpie!

I have watched a magpie stalking through a landfill and I’m thinking of his discerning eye. In the midst of all that plastic and Styrofoam, he will halt, peer into the debris and extract something … a colored stone, a bauble or an earring. Then, taking flight, he will carry his discovery home to his nest where he will give it a choice setting, a niche that displays its merits. Jonathan did that. He waded through the wreckage of our culture, indifferent to the gaudy fakes. Yet, he sometimes saw it (the real thing!) glinting down there under the debris, and when he saw it he lifted it up and said, “Look what I have found.”

AVE, to the Bard of Scaly Mountain.

NEW WRITING STUDIO. COME WRITE

NEW WRITING STUDIO AT
JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL
--Nancy Simpson

The new writing studio is located on the grounds
at Orchard House, John C. Campbell Folk School (JCCFS)in Brasstown, North Carolina. The school itself is 83 years
old, world famous for devotion to arts and crafts The writing program only 13 years old, but the writing studio is brand spanking new.

Recently, I had an opportunity to teach the first class in the new studio, with state of the art computers, printer,copier, and all a writer would need including paper, paper.

My feet hardly touched ground all week as I watched my students working. Each had a writing space with their own computer and printer set up. We had an oval table to use for critiquing sessions, and we had the living room of Orchard House to sprawl out and relax in for teaching sessions and class discussions.

I’ve been teaching writing at the folk school for years,but I have never before seen such a large amount of writing started and finished in one week. The school itself, with sparks of creative energy popping, is a magical place to begin with. The new studio is a welcoming and conducive place for writers.

I invite you to come write with us for a week. If you have already taken writing classes at the folk school,come back as soon as you can. You may walk on air as
I have been doing. You will write, I promise.

If you have never been to the folk school, give it serious thought. Get a catalog, read the class descriptions,make your choice. Scholarships are available based on
financial need . The school offers half price to those living in specific mountain counties. Call the toll free number,check out the web site or e mail me with your questions at nance@dnet.net. Phone. 1800 FOLK-SCH.




John C. Campbell Folk School
Six SUMMER WRITING CLASSES:

May 25-30, 2008 - Spinning Words Into Gold with
Maureen Ryan Griffin. This class will jump start
your writing and and will provide tools to keepyour words flowing. Tap into the Who, Why, When, Where,What and How of Writing. All levels welcome.


June 22- 28, 2008 TOOLS OF THE TRADE, PROFESSIONAL WRITING
with Wendy Webb. The focus is on the short story, novel,and play writing.

June 29-July 5, 2008 FICTION, SHORT AND LONG with Bobbie Pell. Explore the nuggets of your experience that are universal and pop them into your fiction. All levels are welcome.

July 6-11, 2008 WRITING LIFE STORIES with Vickie Hunt.Make headway in creating a short story, personal essay or a memoir essay. All levels are welcome.

July 13-19, 2008 TO BE CONTINUED with Ruth Zehfuss. Focus on getting started
and learning techniques to keep you writing.

July 27-August 1, 2008 YOUR POETRY. LET’S HEAR IT,with Nancy Simpson. Learn to make your poetry sing with sound. Learn how to encapsulate emotion in your poems.
Class is for practicing free verse poets. How and where to publish will be discussed and a list of markets will be given.

See catalog for complete class listing and class descriptions

Books Unlimited in Franklin, NC

Today I met Al Manning, NCWN Board Rep for Netwest, and Betty Cloer Wallace in Franklin to talk about Netwest and to discuss writing and writers in Macon County. After we left the Gazebo, I drove down to Mainstreet and wondered into Books Unlimited. There I talked with the former owner who was subbing for the present owner. I'm sure the friendliness of these folks is one of the reasons that store has been successful for so many years. The wide array of books displayed in both rooms is the other reason.

On the left, just inside the front door, I found a shelf filled with the books of local writers. The ladies said they carried many North Carolina writers. The legendary Gary Carden's books caught my eye and I picked up his Mason Jars in the Flood and other Stories, published in 2000 and reprinted in 2002.

I found it interesting that Gary expressed a special debt to the Internet because much of this book had been read and critiqued by an online group. Many of his revisions are based on the words of hundreds of email posters.

Performance poet and teacher, Michael Beadle

One of the brightest poets on the horizon is Michael Beadle who lives in Canton, NC. He does poetry performances and teaches poetry workshops across North Carolina, mostly with students but also with adults. Michael just finished this year’s Poetry Out Loud, a poetry recitation program that allows high school students to compete at local, state and national levels for cash prizes. He is teaching three weeks of writing residencies in Raleigh – a middle school for two weeks and an elementary school for one week.
A student from Cherokee High School won runner-up in the Poetry Out Loud competition in the state. You can read Michael’s article on her in the Smoky Mountain News (www.smokymountainnews.com) in the Art and Entertainment section.
Michael has lots of projects going. He says, “We writers don’t know when to stop.” He is also working on a history book on Haywood County’s bicentennial.

We are delighted Michael sent a few poems for the Netwest blog. He tells us about them below.

"A Town Too Small For Maps" describes the small town in Eastern North Carolina where I grew up. "Morning at Fontana Lake" is an imagist poem about an unforgettable early morning scene I once beheld while staying at a mountain cabin near Fontana Lake. "A Town Too Small For Maps" won 1st place in a writing contest last year at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial. It was also chosen by Kay Byer for the "Poet of the Week" feature on www.ncarts.com .

You can find more of Michael Beadles’ poems at ncarts.org where he was "Poet of the Week" in June and then in December of 2006.

A Town Too Small For Maps

Folks used to call her Sauls’ Crossroads,
but the postal service said the name was too long.
So, somebody thought on it, yelled “Eureka!”
Eureka, that ancient exclamation of inspiration.
The name stuck long enough to celebrate
her centennial. They say Sherman marched through
once, stopped for a drink, Atlanta ash still on his boots.

There’s time to think on a lot of things here.
The stoplight stays red long enough for drivers
to look both ways at boarded up storefronts.
Post office doubles as a town hall. Over there
used to be Sauls’ General Store. After school,
we’d meet for 3-cent gum and a 12-ounce coke,
maybe a run at Gallaga or Ms. Pac-Man.
In the pine-draped house a quarter mile down
lived Miss Nancy, a state representative.
I once sat in her house, a spell of dark wood.
Thick, bronzed plaques lined her walls. They say
she could match wits with the best in Raleigh.
The only grocery in town shut down last year.
A few gas stations keep a steady business
for the families and farms that remain.
The elementary school closed after consolidation.
Weeds spike through faded lines in the parking lot.

Outside town long rows of tobacco
lined the highways. How I’d pray
the harvester would get to the end.
Reach down, curl a hand around
the stalk, break off three, four leaves
from the bottom, dump it in the tray again
and again. Hands and forearms turned gummy black.
‘Baccer dew wet our shirts, dried stiff as blood.
Early mornings we’d top and sucker,
break off flower tops, pinch out buds,
flick fat, green worms from the leaves.
We’d stop mid-morning when the boss man
or the boss man’s son brought us
Little Debbies and a coke bottle I’d tilt sideways
to suck down faster, feel the burn in my cheeks.
By August, we’d be at the bulk barns, sifting
through crispy, golden leaf, toss out what’s burnt.
Burlap bundled plump, knotted, bound for market.
Stack ‘em high in the big trucks, boys!
Leaves littered the sides of highways,
like money spilled out of a stolen bank truck.
And the best brand of flue-cured that season
paid for school clothes and car payments.

Now those fields yield cotton, far as the eye
wants to see, rows that end in dark woods.
The sharecropper shacks and tin barns lean
like old men waiting to fall, ready to die.
Fields stretch on for miles to other crossroads —
Patetown, Nahunta, Faro, Black Creek.
When a lady asks me where home is,
I pause a moment to give her an approximation,
knowing she won’t stray too far to find
what lies in a town too small for maps.
Near Goldsboro, I say, about an hour east of Raleigh.


— Michael Beadle

Morning at Fontana Lake


ghost gods of fog
float in the coves
shade a vague horizon

dawn blooms
gauzy sun
scratches of gray

stars burrow
back into
their holes

a motorboat
unzips the flesh of lake
with its wake

things stir between trees
jazzy bees
bushy-tailed thieves
birds the size of fruit
perch on the deck
jerk their necks

silver creeks
mint stone coins
plenty for skipping

— Michael Beadle

NCWN's new website looks great, but Netwest part is lacking

The North Carolina Writers' Network website, ncwriters.org has been sorely lacking for a long time. Almost a year ago, when I took the position of Program Coordinator for Netwest, I told Cynthia Barnett, then Exe. Director, how I felt about the antiquated website. She told me it would take much money to update the site and the Board knew the site needed to be updated. Nicki Leone surprised me with being the geek who created the new site. I am not sure, but I imagine NCWN saved a good bit of cash with Nicki, the president, doing all the work.
I want to apologize to our members of Netwest. Our part of the site did not get much of a makeover, I'm afraid. I did not know until Saturday afternoon that the site was to go live on Monday. Although I practically re-wrote every page of the Netwest link, Nicki didn't have time to change it before the "grand Opening" today. I hope to add photographs and correct some errors in the next few weeks.
I would love for our members to email me with ideas of how to make the Netwest link more interesting and more valuable.
I hope the members of Netwest will use the NCWN site now and not complain that the site has nothing for them. Any member can benefit from the new site. Check out all the possibilities. Let me hear from you, OK?

Lonnie Busch, writer and author of award winning Turnback Creek

Lonnie Busch’s novella “Turnback Creek” won the 2006 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in August of 2007. Short stories of his have appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as Southwest Review, The Minnesota Review, The Baltimore Review, Roanoke Review, The Southeast Review, Flint Hills Review, The Iconoclast, The Worchester Review, The Portland Review, Willow Review, and others. He makes his home in the mountains of Franklin, North Carolina.
(Lonnie is a member of NCWN and Netwest)



Princess of Hub Cap City

“There’s a child dancing on those old junker automobiles out there!” the woman screeched, horrified, standing in the doorway of my office with an eye on me and an eye on the junker automobiles. She was referring to my auto salvage just beyond the chain link. The woman had come inside to pay for the shifter knob in her hand. While she craned around the door jam, I slid the sawbuck from her fingers, smiled, and slipped her back a little less change than I should have. That old shifter knob she found on the table wasn’t worth more than fifty cents, if that, but it appeared to have a story and that’s all anyone cares about anyway, a story.

“Yeah, mister, a young girl, jumping around from hood to roof,” the husband chimed in, eager to be a part of something important—all the while their own little yard-apes were running wild through the parking lot, knocking over my columns of stacked caps. Cooped up in the car too long, I suppose. I don’t much care; nothing but junk anyway, as long as they don’t hurt themselves.

“What was she wearing?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.

“A blue dress with little yellow flowers,” the woman said, her face pinched with disapproval and looking like a weasel. “And she’s bare-footed!”

I could tell the woman was perturbed with Anna Beth’s appearance, her unkempt hair and filthy dress. I’ve had complaints before, worse than this.

“That’s my daughter, Anna Beth,” I said. “She’s out there dancing on those junkers every day about this time. I don’t know how she does it, frankly. The child must have soles made of asbestos. That metal out there is hotter than a griddle iron in a 24-hour diner.”

The woman’s eyes grew bigger than baby moon hubcaps. She glared at me for a second, then shot an “aren’t you going to say something?” look at her old man who couldn’t recall how to shift his brain out of park, so conditioned he was to rephrasing the little woman’s thoughts. Probably couldn’t remember the last original idea he had. He just stood there slack-jawed, slumped over like he might have hit his head on the windshield a time or two.

“Oh, no need for concern, ma’am,” I tried to assure her by standing up and walking toward the door. “Anna Beth is a little ballerina. Never so much as a bruised toe!” I tugged on my trousers to lend authenticity to my statement, even though I was wearing suspenders.

Of course by now her two little boys were into some sort of mischief out by the Studebaker front ends that my granddaddy had welded together. He thought it was funny, and I must say it is humorous to see a car with two identical front ends facing in opposite directions. Anyway, the taller boy was poking on the little one’s head or something, making him cry. The wife huffed out of my office and the husband slinked out behind, dragged along in her wake. Pretty soon those folks were in the parking lot hollering at their little renegades, shooting glances over in Anna Beth’s direction and shaking their heads. They hustled the boys into the Explorer, spit a little gravel as they left the lot, and continued on their vacation. I always get a lot of folks on vacation this time of year. My place is a novelty, I guess, though it’s nothing special, really, just home to Anna Beth and me.

The big sign next to the highway is what brings them in. Made it myself. Twenty feet high and sixty feet long. HUB CAP CITY. All capital letters made out of hubcaps. All caps!

Listening to cars rush by up on the highway, I felt the sun hot on my head where my scalp’s gone to seed. The sun can get hot here, even in June, especially when the sky gets wide and blue like a million miles of ocean. Today’s one of those days, without a breeze, and I usually wear a cap if I’m gonna be out very long. But I try to stay inside if I can, where it’s cool. I glanced over toward the sea of wreckage wedged in beyond the chain link, looking for Anna Beth, even though I knew I wouldn’t see her.

I wasn’t much more than a kid when Charlene got pregnant with Anna Beth, maybe nineteen, twenty at most. We weren’t married, but we pretended to be in the backseat of my Chevy. The day she told me she was pregnant, I said, “Charlene, if I don’t love this child, I can’t stick around!” Charlene just smiled, but I was dead serious. It may sound like a cruel thing to say, like I should’ve been more responsible-minded and all, but I had plans. Big plans. And they didn’t figure to include a wife and child.

I was headed for Nova Scotia to work on the fishing boats. Met a fella once who told me about the job, said it was hard work, fourteen hours a day, four or five months during season, but after they rolled up the nets and docked the boats your time was your own, and you had enough cash to last you the rest of the year. I loved tilling the sea. Back when I was in high school, I worked a few summers in Charleston on the fishing boats and took to it like a gull on a mullet. No seasickness for me. Some of the new boys spent the afternoon bent over the rail studying the food they had for breakfast. And not all of them were boys either; some were men shouting their grits into the brine. But I just hauled nets and laughed. I guess God blessed me with the constitution of a humpback whale.

One day, a cold snap whipped the ocean into a fury, waves spitting and spewing, had been since three that morning. Several of the men were on the rail, but one boy in particular had done run out of menu. The boy looked terrible, green as seaweed, and dry heaving nothing but foul air. The Captain walked over to him, turned him around, and said he saw something peculiar inside the boy’s mouth. “Boy, I’m not sure what that red ring is in there,” Captain said, with a grave tone, “but you better swallow hard, I think it’s your asshole!” Captain and I laughed until we about fell off the deck. That was the life for me and I knew it.

But it didn’t work out that way, of course. Life happens while you’re making other plans and I married Charlene and ended up hanging drywall with my old man. Not bad work, but hard work, and dirty, and I imagine my lungs look like broken sacks of flour from all the plaster dust. Probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway, the Nova Scotia thing. I would’ve spent the off season stewing my liver in Jack Daniel’s and losing all my cash playing stud in the back room of Ruby’s.

So I ended up with this place. My granddaddy owned it, called it “Bill’s Auto Salvage”. Name wasn’t a real bell ringer and when he died my daddy got it and quickly passed it off to me like a sack of copperheads. It was ten acres of has-been vehicles when it landed in my lap, an automobile graveyard all the way back to the sycamores. A few years after I got it, I decided to sell hubcaps, so I pried them off every wheel of every car beyond the chain link and stacked them out front. Stacks of hubcaps everywhere, like columns in a palace; hell, it was a palace, still is.

Eventually I put out some folding tables, made a little flea market, and filled the tables mostly with useless junk: little glass bottles, farm tools, shifter knobs and what not, but that’s what people want, long as it has a story. From time to time folks will buy a hubcap or two, but mostly caps are a curiosity. Folks like to look at them because they’re shiny and odd, and they see their reflection in the chrome. They hold them like a steering wheel in their hands, rotate them slowly, watching their reflections slip around the swells and valleys like fleshy pools of quicksilver. But they can’t figure what to do with caps other than what they’re doing, so they smile and put them back on the stack.

Now Charlene would never have moved here to live in a junkyard, but then neither would I if she was still with me. It was sad when I committed her to Harris Gloams Hospital, leaving her with folks that were screaming at walls and eating checkers. It broke my heart, what was left of it. But she had to go before she hurt herself again and I couldn’t stay home from work every day to make sure she didn’t. I only visit a few times a year now, not near as much as when hope was still an option.

So now it’s just Anna Beth and me, most times it’s just me. I remember when Children’s Services came out here to check on Anna Beth a couple years back. Had it fixed in their mind to take her away from me. Seems that one of my customers had called them after seeing Anna Beth dancing barefoot across the junkers, thought it was irresponsible of me, that I was unfit to have such a beautiful child. Hell, they might be right.

The woman from Children’s Services showed up wearing a tan skirt and jacket with a blouse the color of a canary and matching high heels. She had white hair as straight as a waterfall that ended at her narrow shoulders and little blue eyes that were so close set that it looked like the thin bridge of her nose was the only thing keeping them from a collision. She was friendly, in an institutional sort of way, but her smile was kind of sad, like the grill of a ‘53 Buick Skylark.

“I’m Trudence Galloway, from Children’s Services,” she said. “Are you Mr. Wiley Tiller?”

I nodded. She held out her hand and I took it, even though I had just finished jerking a carburetor off a ‘68 Mustang for a fella. She grimaced when she saw the grease on her manicured fingers. I handed her my rag, but it was dirtier than my hands. She pulled one of those wet wipes from her purse and cleaned her fingers. I figured she must have had plenty of run-ins with junk dealers to be that prepared.

“Mr. Wiley…I mean, Mr. Tiller, we’ve had a complaint about your little girl running around barefoot in your junkyard, playing unattended on the wreckage? Is that true?”

I didn’t know what to say to this poor woman, so I shrugged. I think she took it as a sign of moral ineptitude and demanded to see Anna Beth at once.

“I don’t know where she is right now,” I said, scratching my head and leaving a big greasy spot on my scalp.

“Where is Mrs. Tiller?” she asked.

“She’s indisposed indefinitely,” I told her, and she didn’t appreciate that answer either, putting her hands to her hips, obviously vexed.

Her features seemed to be shrinking, sucking in tighter toward the center of her face.

“I must see that child at once, Mr. Tiller!” she said, rigid as a fence post.

“Why don’t we walk outside,” I said. She followed me into the sunlight.

“There she is,” Trudy shouted, pointing, and looked appalled. “Mr. Tiller, that child hasn’t been bathed in weeks, and her hair, does it ever get brushed? She’s filthy and she…she is not wearing shoes!” That just made her madder than a moth in a street lamp. She stomped off stammering about tetanus and infection and germs and said she’d return with the law. She held to her word, I’ll give her that.

Pretty soon, here come two patrol cars and her green Impala screeching into the parking lot kicking up dirt like a stampede of wild horses. Doors are slamming and people are muttering but mostly I hear Trudy’s shrill voice like a train whistle coming through the door. She’s all fired up, high strutting ahead of this pack of lawmen like Wyatt Earp with a lynch mob. Trudy plants her feet in front of my desk and shoots a bony finger straight out at me, then looks over at the officer.

“Mr. Wiley, I’m Officer Duncan. Sir, we need to see your daughter, now!”

“Well, I can’t help you. Like I told Trudy, I mean Ms. Galloway, I don’t know where Anna Beth is right now. But if you’ll follow me out to the parking lot….”

Officer Duncan took my comment as proof that I was lacking parental fortitude and moral fiber, and that I mustn’t have a booger’s worth of humanity anywhere in my old wreck of a body. He promptly escorted me into the backseat of his patrol car and commenced to making calls and running checks while the other officers searched the premises. Poor Officer Duncan spun like a dervish in the front seat of the patrol car when the news came over the radio. He glared at me around the headrest. All I could offer in the way of explanation was a shrug.

Still waiting in the backseat of the patrol car, I could see the color drain from Trudy’s face when Officer Duncan explained that Anna Beth had been nine years old when she had been reported missing, and that had been over twenty years ago. Never heard from since. Trudy shook her head, pointed out beyond the chain link, moved her lips in defense of her eyes, and rattled her head some more. She was starting to remind me of Charlene—just before I took her to Harris Gloams. Officer Duncan escorted Trudy to her car and she drove off slowly, but not before sending her eyes over the chain link several more times.

Officer Duncan warned me that even though he didn’t know what was going on, he would ‘upend the dirt’ until he found out. Well, Officer Duncan never returned and neither did Children’s Services.

For years folks had been stopping here and seeing Anna Beth dancing out on the wreckage, and for the first four or five years I’d run out to see, too. But I never saw her, even when folks said they were looking right at her. I wished I could, though, before Charlene got so bad. Maybe she could’ve forgiven herself, not that there was anything to forgive. Charlene just got caught in traffic on her way to pick up Anna Beth from dance class, got there ten minutes late. Ten minutes—that’s not much time, but enough to change the bearing of someone’s life forever. Anna Beth had been wearing the blue dress Charlene made her, the one with the little yellow flowers, and was waiting on the street. When Charlene got there Anna Beth was gone.

Charlene took it hard and I wasn’t much help. We grieved like opposite ends of a candle. She grieved fiercely, her hope and heart burning away steadily while I was the cold end, hiding at the bottom, beneath the residue of her sorrow. She grieved for both of us, I suppose, until the flame went out behind her eyes.

“Charlene, if I don’t love this child, I can’t stick around!” What a dumb thing I had said to Charlene that day in the Chevy when she told me she was pregnant. Hell, I didn’t even know what love was until Anna Beth was born. When I came to the hospital and looked at her through the glass, my heart melted like warm sap in a maple tree. I couldn’t stop looking at her, like the part of Wiley Tiller that was lost at sea had finally come home to port.

Anyway, for years I wished I could see Anna Beth the way strangers did, and I didn’t understand it. One night, long after Charlene was gone and I had moved here, I couldn’t hold a composed vigil anymore. I ran out in that parking lot in the middle of the night and started screaming at the stars, hurling hubcaps at God until it looked like Hub Cap City was under siege by UFO’s. The hubcaps seemed to hang there in the night air, flying and circling overhead, but not coming down. Finally, one by one, they landed in a crooked row between the chain link and me, the last cap falling at my feet. I closed my eyes a second, to let my soup settle, but when I opened them, Anna Beth was dancing across the caps like they were stones in a creek. I sat down on the gravel, waiting for her to come near so I could hold her, clean her face, brush her hair, but she didn’t. After an hour or so the sun came up and she was gone.

Sometimes Anna Beth is sitting at my kitchen table, 29 years old now I guess, that’s how old she’d be---is---I don’t know. I picture her at the sink, her two children at the kitchen table eating their cereal, rushing off to school. Sometimes I see Anna Beth reading under a tree; a fine young woman with blond hair wearing a summer dress, bare-footed, looking so much like Charlene it squeezes at my chest. But it’s the only way I see Anna Beth now, through a quirk of the brain cells, a trick of the heart.

I still can’t and haven’t to this day been able to see Anna Beth the way strangers do, during the day, dancing across the hoods and roofs. But on the nights I can’t sleep, after I’ve coaxed the last bit of novocaine from the television, I take my lawn chair out on the parking lot, cozy up near a stack of hubcaps, and toss them one after the other toward the chain link, toward the sea of wreckage, and they sail away, shiny and bright like moons.
See Lonnie's website: http://www.fiction.lonniebusch.com/

Jayne Jaudon Ferrer Speaks on Poetry

How Now, Brown Cow: Poetry’s Place in Our World
by
Jayne Jaudon Ferrer

I suspect the average person rarely thinks about poetry. I, on the other hand, consider it daily. I’m either reading it, writing it, pondering its place in the universe (limited!) or figuring how out I can get someone excited about it—or to, at least, give it a chance.

I didn’t start out to be a poet—though, admittedly, I was drawn to that genre from my earliest days. Is that because my kindergarten teacher routinely exposed us to a steady diet of childhood classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Swing” and the sadly anonymous “Three Little Kittens?” Because the flow and repetition of nursery rhymes have such natural appeal to the early verbal and auditory development of children? Because I was blessed to come from a family that celebrated reading and had ready access to an abundance of books and records? Possibly, I was just a strange little girl; I did, after all, read the dictionary for fun.

My initial passion for writing was channeled into short stories. I wrote the occasional poem, but most of my time in elementary and middle school was spent writing stories of adventure, science fiction, and romance—most featuring fifteen-year-old heroines which, for some reason, I felt was the most glamorous age one could possibly be. In the spring of the ninth grade, however, my English teacher assigned a poetry project which lit a fire in me that burns brightly to this day. The assignment was to select, explain, and illustrate twenty or so poems in a notebook. How I wish I had that notebook today! I remember not one detail about the poems I chose, and I long to know if the poets I love now were ones I discovered during that project. In any case, by the time my notebook was finished, I was completely enamored, and I spent all my high school years wallowing in the works of one poet after another while writing voluminous amounts of flowery, angst-ridden, teenage drivel. I spent my junior and senior year trying to convince my Honors English instructor that Rod McKuen was every bit as gifted as Lord Byron (and made a lot more money!) and, by the time I graduated, had become a serious devotee of that art form.

In college, my own drivel matured and improved. I began submitting to contests and magazines and was rewarded with awards and publication. I reveled in writing workshops and intensive study of poetic forms. On a liberal arts college campus, one can find poetry fans fairly easily; not till I got out in the real world did I realize what an uphill battle I faced in pushing poetry to the masses. Promoting porn would have been easier—and a whole lot more lucrative. I put my passion aside to focus on something that paid the bills—advertising copywriting (which bears some similarity to poetry). And then, in a quirky twist of fate, I got the chance to publish a book of poetry—by a major New York publisher, no less! And then I published another. And another, and another. Because most big publishers—and, let’s face it, most readers—treat poetry as if it were parsnips in a box of popsicles—I pose no threat to John Grisham. But because my poetry ended up in some pretty prominent hands, I bypassed the selling chapbooks one by one/struggling for recognition and distribution phase typical of most poets, which means the academic world disdains me. I am, God help me, a “commercial” poet—a rare species right up there with the Yangtze River Dolphin. I love my art, but I see nothing wrong with making money at it. In fact, if I’m not making money at it, it’s a bit hard to justify doing it on an ongoing basis. I never expect to get rich writing poetry, but there’s certainly no honor in poverty or obscurity, so bah!humbug! to all those snobs who sneered at Maya Angelou when she sold out to Hallmark. That was a red letter day for poetry, and the world is a better place for having Maya’s words in the racks at Wal-Mart.

Here’s the other problem with poetry: besides the fact that nobody reads it, waaaay too many people write bad versions of it. Unfortunately, like parenthood, writing poetry doesn’t require a license. The chief motivation for becoming a poet seems to be a) a hopelessly romantic view of the world; b) a deep desire to tell the world to $&*!!*# off, c) the need for a cheap, yet seemingly heartfelt, gift; or d) a classroom assignment that can no longer be avoided. I have no problem with those last two, but there’s enough cheesy, angry poetry in the world to last several lifetimes. When I speak to students—the absolute best perk of being a published author, by the way—the number one rule I lay down is “DON’T BE BORING!” If you can’t create something worth reading, then you should not be writing.

Now before anyone fires off a scathing e-mail indictment of this harsh pronouncement, let me clarify that if you are writing for your own pleasure, or to share or leave behind your poetic thoughts and impressions with your family, then you should feel free to pour out heart and soul to said heart’s content (though, even then, I suspect your recipients would appreciate proper grammar, a modicum of fresh perspective, and a minimum of bad rhyme!). That kind of poetry is a verse of a different color, if you will. But if you intend your words to wind up in front of an editor’s face, you had better make sure certain adjectives—banal, bland, and boring come most immediately to mind—don’t wind up in his brain as he reads.

Poetry’s a tough sell, folks; give it all you’ve got before you put it out there in the trenches. Your country will thank you…if they ever get around to reading it.

Jayne Jaudon Ferrer is a poet and speaker who lives in Greenville, SC. To receive her “Scintillating Springtime Parade of Poetry,” a 30-day celebration of National Poetry Month, visit www.jaynejaudonferrer.com or send an e-mail with the word “Poetry Parade” in the subject line to commagoddess@gmail.com.

Netwest Author, Jerry Hobbs, has a secret desire

LATER
'Live for today.’ ‘Take that special trip while you can.’ ‘Stop saving the good china, crystal or silverware until later.’ We’ve all heard that advice, especially how we shouldn’t put things off until it’s too late. The problem is, when is later? Now is easy, but it’s a little more difficult to decide when later finally arrives.
Even though I’ve often tried to bring my ‘laters’ and my ‘nows’ closer together, some things just aren’t that simple. To illustrate, let me go back a few years.
Actually, it’s more that a few, since I was sixteen when I first realized I wanted a motorcycle. At the time, dealing with the desire was simple because there was no way I could afford one. There just weren’t that many yards to mow, snow to shovel or tobacco plants to house. But that was okay, I told myself the time would come after I was out of school, had a job and could afford one. Which would, of course, occur – later.
Well, later brought the job all right, but it also brought a wife, children, car payments and a mortgaged home. But, hey, that was okay. I was young, happy with my life and there was always…later. One day the children would move out, have families of their own, the car would be paid off and maybe even the mortgage.
As expected, later became the present, and it was time to do what I’d waited all those years for. Only, now there were grandkids to baby sit and play with. Somehow the image of this kind old grandfather rocking the little ones to sleep or reading a bedtime story and then going out to fire up the old Harley Davidson and race up and down Main Street while spitting bugs from between my teeth just didn’t seem appropriate. Later would have to wait awhile longer.
Not surprising, later came around again. The kids went in one direction, the grandkids in another, and we moved here to the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. In case you aren’t aware, this area is a motorcyclist’s dream come true. A Mecca for motorized two-wheelers. What person could deny themselves the thrill of leaning a powerful, 1200CC beauty at an impossible angle while speeding through the banked curves of one of those seldom traveled mountain roads, listening to the exhilarating roar of those twin exhausts as they shout, “FREEDOM” in a way no enclosed vehicle will ever know or understand? Listen. Can’t you hear that message as thunder echoes back from the mountainside that flashes by faster and faster in a blur of living proof that man and machine can unite their spirits and conquer anything that…
Well, maybe you get the idea. In my mind, the ultimate later had finally arrived, and it was time to fulfill a dream born all those years ago. A dream kept alive by hope. Hope and the belief that later would one day become…now.
Only now, there was a problem. When I was sixteen, all the money I earned from my part time jobs put together wasn’t enough to purchase, much less maintain a motorcycle or pay the insurance. Not surprising, it appears the decision my wife and I made to retire and live our lives together in this land of beauty also didn’t include a budget that stretched far enough to provide for that teenagers dream.
Don’t get me wrong. There aren’t any regrets, because we certainly enjoy our retirement. It has given us a chance to appreciate the things in life that are really important, such as spending time with good friends. The truth is, we take a great deal of pride and pleasure to invite people over to share a meal served on fine china, crystal and silverware handed down from our parents. It’s also a good feeling to know that someday the same dinnerware will be passed down to our children. And to their children. As far as my childhood dream is concerned, well, maybe later wasn’t all that important after all.
But you know, we really don’t have people over that often. Plus there’s nothing wrong with our everyday dishes. I wonder how much money a person could get for all that fancy stuff. Probably enough to put a down payment on a used Harley or Kawasaki. The problem is I don’t know how long it would take before my wife noticed something was missing. Maybe I should discuss it with her first. And that’s exactly what I will do. But not right now. Maybe Later.


Jerry Hobbs is the author of two novels and a book of short stories published by Lulu.com. Click on Jerry Hobbs to see his books. He writes to entertain and has a good bit of humor in his work.

Gary Carden, storyteller and folklorist

Gary Carden graduated from Western Carolina University near Sylva, NC. He taught literature and drama for fifteen years, worked for the Cherokee Indians for fifteen years and has become well-known as a playwright.
His popular play "The Prince of Dark Corners" has been made into a movie and has received high ratings from around the state. To learn more about Gary Carden, see his website, www.tannerywhistle.net.



WHAT THIS HOUSE REMEMBERS
By Gary Carden

I live in an old farmhouse that is literally falling apart. Each spring, clouds of termites rise in the bathroom and the bedroom, coating the windows and covering the kitchen stove and the mirrors in the bathroom with tiny wings – wings that clog my vacuum cleaner for weeks. In the winter, the wind woofs in the eaves, pours through the attic and seeps into my bedroom like an ice-laden river. All of the doors hang off-balance and a tennis ball, dropped in the living room will roll slowly from room to room – like a cue ball looking for a pocket – until, eventually, it find its way to the kitchen, always coming to rest behind the sink.
But, with each passing year, my affection for these canted floors and leaning walls deepens. I came to live here when I was two years old, and now, seventy years later, I still sleep in the same bedroom – the one my Uncle Albert dubbed “the North Pole.” The entire house bears testimony to the lives of my grandparents, and when I walk from room to room, I hear lost voices and sense fading warmth.
Just here, beneath this old flue, my grandmother tended her Home Comfort stove. And over there, on that cracked cement hearthstone, that once fronted a fireplace, I used to lie whimpering on winter nights – my cheek pressed against the warm hearthstone (I was plagued with chronics earaches) while my grandmother poured warm cod liver oil from a tablespoon into my ear. There, where my computer now sets, my grandfather used to tune the old Silvertone radio, listening to “Renfro Valley” on Sunday mornings. It is also where his coffin rested (for I lived in a time in which the dead came home for a final farewell).

The old house seems to be slowly sinking into the earth, dragging with it a roofless canning house and a derelict barn. Yet, there are brief moments – usually in the morning – when this dim space seems filled with a kind of tangible energy. There are mornings when I wake in the chilled air of my bedroom, sensing that I am not alone -that this empty shell has become an echo chamber. In the kitchen, my grandmother’s Home Comfort radiates warmth while she conjures red-eye gravy from a black skillet; cathead biscuits bloom in the oven and a tin coffee pot chuckles on the back burner. I feel my Uncle Albert’s discontent (he suffered from migraines) as he sits leaning back in a cane-bottomed chair at the dining room table, his chair legs gouging little half-moons in the linoleum. My grandfather is milking the cow, and any minute now, he will stomp into the kitchen with a bucket of steaming milk. From the living room comes the strains of Jo Stafford’s “You Belong to Me,” followed by the banter of Reed Wilson, WWNC’s popular early morning d. j.

Fly the ocean in a silver plane,
See the jungle when its wet with rain.

But when my foot touches the floor, it all vanishes … recedes like an ocean tide withdrawing down the corridors of the years; carrying away warmth, biscuits and my grandmother’s hands through the draft of a broken window. Sometimes, I move quickly to the barren kitchen, hoping to capture a belated fragment of what was here a moment ago – perhaps the last vestiges of Albert’s complaint lingers. (“Ahhh, God! I didn’t sleep a wink,” he says, as he massages his head). And here…who is this tow-headed creature in his peppermint striped pajamas? My God, it’s me! I’m on my way to Albert’s bedroom, where I will find a stack of lurid magazines beneath his pillow…Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Black Hawk and The Blue Beetle.

Is it possible that there are past moments that have taken refuge in these rooms? Are there moments that were fueled by such intense emotion, they hang suspended like banks of summer clouds, waiting for an alignment of hours, months and memory? My mother’s grief for my father’s murder is somewhere in this bedroom; my grandmother’s loss of a “blue baby;” the return of two sons from WW II haunts the front porch; an old, broken fiddle that played “The Waltz You Saved for Me” resonates faintly in the attic – are they all here like eavesdroppers in the next room, waiting for their cue to enter?

Perhaps a night will come when moonlight will penetrate the cobwebs on the attic window, touching the faded portrait of my father’s face; and he will turn to my mother, whispering – and the two of them will laugh. Then, a dozen specters will awake causing this old house to shudder as music, heat and the smell of red-eye gravy
floats in the summer darkness. Then, children’s footsteps will mingle with the slow trudge of the elderly, and blasts of snow, wind and heat will batter these walls as spring and winter collide and this old house finally explodes leaving nothing behind but the buzz of a solitary wasp freed from its prison behind an attic window.

Finally, this old house will mingle with fog and moonlight, drifting through the stand of hemlocks that encircles this dim cove where my homeless spirit will rise to meet the morning sun.