Monthly Archives: January 2006

death and dumplins


When I was three I began gathering flowers from the mountainside; placing them into open caskets of distant cousins. I ate chicken and dumplings in parlor rooms beside dead uncles of other uncles at least once a month when I was five. During a wake that same year I hid my cousin, Dewey’s, General Lee

miners ladies


Country Roads. John Denver sang about them. Morning hours, teardrops and miners ladies. There are two industries in West Virginia. Religion and Coal. If you’re not a preacher you’re a miner. Or you use to be. Pa fed his family with a number four shovel. He still goes downstairs to pray … in a basement

plain and simple


“I notice that you use plain simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the best way to write English – it is the modern way, and the best way. Stick to it; dont let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly,