Two Poems
Kevin McDaniel


​Down the Road
    For Robert C.

where I played ball   
    in high school,
I once caught a ride home   
    after practice

in a red Suzuki Samurai   
    where empty bags
of Red Man and snuff cans   
    freckled the floorboard.

Coach C. told stories
    about West Virginia’s dirt roads
that are as windy and crooked    
    as Texas is flat.

He had a message
    for boys smoking pot,
spinning skid marks in the school parking lot,    
    and racing to Three Gates (local dump)       

to fight after practice:
    If they messed around
where I grew up,   
    they’d be lying in a ditch somewhere.       

He spat tobacco juice   
    into an old pop bottle
while describing his family’s    
    ramshackle outhouse,

a father who drank too much,
   and how the football field was a coliseum
where he could tear the head off
   all the crap in his life:

If you stand in shit long enough,
    you’ll get some on you.
I interrupted with theories about
    UFOs, crop circles,

Elvis sightings in Kalamazoo,
    and how the U.S. government
covered up such sensational reports.
    The truth would be too much.

You’re out there. You know that?
    As a kid, I had real stories,
but couldn’t strip them down during a car ride   
    to a moving moral

like a man    
    who sees all the road,
doesn’t filter his talk
    because it is what it is,

and there is no other reason    
to tell a story otherwise. 

​


Blessings of Country Living

On my dirt road,
cool rainwater
fills in a pothole

where cardinals
chickadees
and baby blue jays bathe.

Good neighbors visit
to swap stories about struggling tomatoes,
a mysterious yellow squash growing

in the backyard,
the best spots
for building a fire pit,

or whether it’s worthwhile 
suffering sticky briars
for wild blackberries,

but I don’t talk about
my nightmare,

General Grant plunging a shovel
through my chest because

I’m trying 
to save
Vicksburg

as news outlets report
49 killed 58 wounded in Orlando shooting.











​

About the Author: Kevin J. McDaniel lives in Pulaski, Virginia, with his wife, two daughters, and two chocolate Labs. To date, his work has appeared in JuxtaProse, West Texas Literary Review, Appalachian Heritage Writers Symposium, GFT Press, Clinch Mountain Review, Bluestone Review, Common Ground Review, The Cape Rock, Broad River Review, Floyd County Moonshine and The Paddock Review and others. He was a finalist for Broad River Review's 2017 Rash Award, and his poem, Rubbernecking, earned third place for the 2017 Appalachian Heritage Writers Symposium Contest. In addition, he is the author of the poetry chapbook, Family Talks, which was published by ​Finishing Line Press in 2017.

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