Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
Everything I know about music I learned from Jimmy Ray Casey. He had a perm, and a mustache, and wore cut-off jeans just like Daisy Duke. It was the British Motor Repair that brought us Jimmy Ray. My daddy ordered all the parts for his shop from a place in Birmingham back when you had to call them up on the phone and then pay…
“Don’t get above your raising.”— Karen Salyer McElmurray Water falls intothe deep fryer, tidalingtowards my shaking hands. Singed skin still serving,brown, sprawling splatters sink ineveryone has them. From drive-thru speakers,music caught inside the car,today, Chopin plays. We work like dancersgraceful folds and tucks, buns pinned,lettuce put to bed. To argue back isto slow down, to say your paindemands us to pause. I dare love this…
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I read an advanced copy of Ben Kline’s It Was Never Supposed to Be mere days after the 2024 presidential election was called. Meanwhile, pundits and journalists were stumbling over themselves to analyze results they found baffling, and I couldn’t help but feel that Kline’s work had already predicted its outcome. It Was Never Supposed to Be is a poetry collection, but it reads more…
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash