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. |
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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.