Richlands

- for Nannie G. Whitt (1931-1991)

I

This is no country for young liberals like me.
They chased the negroes out, but some
Must still be hiding here --
When it's quiet, you can hear them whisper
Above the hymns from the Baptist church below.

This is where drunken uncles scare
Their nephews and nieces with tales
Of phantom hitchhikers they've met
As they drive along Jewell Ridge, whose eyes
Entreat you to take them home.

We bury my mother here, against a rock.
Dynamite clears her way to God.
We lower her into the blasted, blackened ground.
We tuck her in -- as she did with me
Till I was five years old.
I did it the first time the day she died.
I pulled up the sheet and guiltily glimpsed
The passage I'd come here though,
Then blocked, filled up with a tube
Which carried her wasting away.

That womb gave up on me some time ago.

II

My sister and me drive up to the Ridge that night.
To scare off phantom hitchhikers, we sing:

I don't keer if it rains and freezes
Long as I have my Plastic Jesus
Sittin' on the dashboard of my car -- 

 -- Yip-ee
		ti
		  yi
		    yay
			  yoh -- 

He's so fine and he's so cool
He'll walk across my swimmin' pool
Jesus on the dashboard of my car.

Glancing in back, my mother not there,
My sister runs a hand through her hair and says,
'Isn't there a convenience store
Up here, somewhere?'

III

Let's get away from God for a minute.
Let's walk out into the misty dark
And pray we find some man to walk with us.
There's only recycled air at a funeral home --
The flowers take our breath and blow it back.
Sometimes, it's better not to breath at all.

I've forgotten that I remember this street.
I recognize the trailer of a boy I used to know,
And go down there to find him, but he's gone.
The trailer is empty, although the lights are on.

The lights are on in the baseball diamond
Across from the Magic Mart. Boys are shouting for balls
In the field, and someone wants to go to Hardee's for food.
They're safer from AIDS than me, they think,
And maybe I think so, too.

IV

After eating, I leave the church again
And follow the winding street that leads to school.

The Middle School looks like a mall to me now.
It's not so tall as it used to be,
And someone has rebuilt the doors, which now are locked.
It nestles beneath a large, green hill,
Where ramshackle houses grow like hyacinth.
An old English teacher of mine's birthplace
Used to stand in that same field -- how odd,
To work, and maybe die, where you were born.

Just beyond that wall there is a locker room
Where I came near tears every day for three
Years. The door is unlocked and I walk in.

Two boys are showering here, though they
Are not much older than me. One sees me,
Pulls a towel from the wall,
Pulls it taut and snaps it in my face.
The other boy in the corner watches us --
He thinks I cannot see what he hides in his hand,
But I always did, and so did he.

My mother never went here -- she never reached
The seventh grade, and yet she knew,
In a way that only mothers know,
In the way that boy in the corner knows,
That her youngest son would never have a son.

V

My home rebuilds itself in my head
Each night I pull it down.
She cries as I fight with my father again,
A fight that even death can never end.

My sisters and brother bring out the Ouija board
Each time I'm hone and try to talk to them,
As if they might be here. But the day she died,
She'd been gone for days.

When I once asked if I had shamed her
Being the man I am,
Her unseeing eyes snapped to my face,
Her lifeless hand roughly slapped my face,
She smiled and said,
'I'm glad...I'm glad.'

The woman she was now lies in a box,
Sunk deep in the soil of a hill that stands
Above a little town they named Richlands,
A place where even I could find some peace.

Tell me what you think!

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