Presented with the challenge of "reading" a book with very few words, I wrote this poem to describe the plot of Wild Child #1:
In the patchworked topography
of slow, lonely hills
lives a mute mountain folk,
as ancient of days
as the Appalachian range.
There
a wild daughter
jumps the fence
and runs
from home-baked safety
to chase the wordly scents of
crickwater & moss,
rolling naked downslope,
mowing clover and hay.
Muddied, the
prodigal daughter returns,
feet baptized in a washtub
cuz that's what
the good book says,
but more woman
than girl,
rebels against
hand-stitched innocence,
and casts herself
from the garden,
from the quilt,
from the washtub,
from the apple tree,
to the wilderness
and the mercy of the wolves.
A century of progress
paves those hills
into geometry,
gouges coal from the earth
and spreads it across the surface
as pickup exhaust,
tape-recorded angst,
and televised electricity
that deceives the night into
thinking it is day.
Another wild daughter
falls prey and
rejects the good book
to follow the howls of wolves.
And the wolves' howls
darken the black of the sky.
Thank you to the Pittsburgh Zine Fair, Cyberpunk Apocalypse, The Monollah Foundry, and The Heinz Endowments for promoting me. Thank you, also, to everyone who listened to and played in the dirt with me.
