| The Story I Can't Tell Sticks In My Throat A violence splits the syllables down a back road, the smell of horseweat, wagons creaking in the gee and haw of tongue and trace, lightning bugs dancing on Percy's wagon, his hat, the hole in the crown, pulled down, bobbing, while the slow mules go on up the hill where he will "carry the truck-row," his hind-end facing the sun, the mule, humbling and humoring toward the shade, the end, the beginning, a piece, fabric cut from the sweat--the rows topped, middles swamped with rotten blooms, greenblack juices, splattered tobacco worms-- and Percy barely moving the truck-row, a frail man bloated with blues, jagged currents of sounds, little rivulets spilling from his pores. (from Poor People, Nightshade Press, 1998) |
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