Home in the South

The Grandmother and the Berries Back Home

My grandmother had a fat bulldog whose jaws drug the ground. It laid outside in the sun by the sliding glass door and grunted and shuffled in the pine needles. There, once, that dog drug up a chicken leg swiped clean off a fresh chicken. Grandmother showed me how to pull the tendons to make [...]

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In the Dirt

Dirt-road living makes a different kind of American child. The impact of car tires on gravel,  the weaving around tiny mud caverns, the gravel popping like confetti bombs, all make the sound of a warm body coming for you, someone new at the door. Even if you know it’s your great-uncle Sam and he’s just [...]

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stolen kitchen heritage

When we lost my Mamaw, exactly ten years ago, I went first thing to her kitchen, pulled her skillet from the stove, wrapped it in a dish towel, and walked it straight to my borrowed car. I stole it. I didn’t know how to drive a stick, but that’s what I did all the way [...]

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the way we roll

We celebrated the fade from green to brown with an impromptu trip to Alabama for my sister’s birthday. We surprised her at her birthday supper after a ten hour drive. The whole while, trees erupted in color. My little brother drove down from Nashville, too, so we were all there, just our little immediate family. [...]

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Sonic Youth

I went home again – the mountain, saw the vertical beams of our gymnasium overlooking the hills, all the slight spreading of red at the fingertips of maples. The sun was hot, but the air had a glaze of cool in it, picking up little hairs and standing them on end. I bought a bag [...]

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what can only be hinted at with words

There was a point when I turned a corner and laid my eyes on Georgia O’Keefe, and I stopped in a door frame, not stepping any closer. Blocking museum goers, I inhaled as for perfume, as for steaming food, and then I cried – that quiet feeling of recognition, something of earth and death and [...]

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