Respite for the Poor, Ruin to the Unpunished
Edison Jennings finds decay, tragedy, and the haunting echoes of forgotten Appalachian lives in two vivid poems.
THE CHURCH OF THE SPIRIT OF THE HOLY FIRE
First, the sign was shotgunned
for reasons known but to the shooter,
if indeed the shooter knew,
and some years later, a drunk ran his car
off the road, causing him to overcorrect
and cross the white line into the downhill
path of a coal truck, slamming the car
across the churchyard, flattening the sign,
killing the drunk, girlfriend too,
though the trucker survived unscathed,
a miracle, some said. As for the church,
no one had attended service there
in close to a hundred years, so no one knew
or cared just what genus of church it was
other than a casualty of one Great Awakening
or another, though the church itself
still stood, but in a coma
waiting yet another awakening
when it might again proclaim itself as was written
on the flattened sign in gold script:
The Church of the Spirit of Holy Fire
Here the Ghost Resides;
Here the Ghost Presides;
Here the Poor Might Find Respite
And as if summoned, they came, the homeless,
finding shelter but little else until the sheriff
secured the door with a hasp & lock,
though every Halloween a clique of boys
would crowbar the hasp, drink cheap wine
in the house of God, and then deface
parish gravestones with pentagrams
and swastikas, to conjure the ghosts
of the scandalous couple killed
in the coal truck wreck (as it had come
to be known) whom the boys
endowed with the darkest of powers,
as anathemas to Jesus and assuredly
damned, then stagger-swagger home
and later boast of their temerity, an event
so predictable the town police
didn’t bother finding their identities,
their identities being already known
and not wanting to know more,
they’d replace the hasp and lock and judge
their labor sufficient unto the day,
until the whereabouts of a missing child
revealed that dull idyll as deceit,
and the parents raised hell all the way
to the capital and the governor.
Then with a kick the church doors
flew back, terrifying swifts into frantic flight,
revealing the decomposing body
of an African American schoolboy,
his clothes in a pile and a crowbar
close by. Soon the crime grew cold,
the colder the better, according to some,
and no one ever held to account.
Several years later the church caught fire,
arson probably, and little now grows
but weeds through stony rubbish
where once it stood. Where the poor
might find respite and where the ghost
might now reside cannot be determined.
For Terry Hummer
JIMMY LAMBENT AND THE MULES
In the Tennessee town where I grew up
July 4th began with high diving mules
plunging from a platform some twenty feet
above the county fairground swimming pool.
The mule judged most graceful by a panel
of town worthies received a blue ribbon
and a garland to drape across its neck
with great solemnity while the high school
marching band played Dixie. Of course, the mules
had no choice because the ramp was narrow
and the one way down was slip, bray, and fall,
and we thought it was funny, drinking beer,
acting the fool until Jimmy Lambent
showed up on his American Flyer
with no chain, not that Jimmy cared a lick.
At six-foot-six he could straddle his bike
and push himself just almost anywhere
he might have a mind to go. The sheriff
once found Jimmy pushing his bike south bound
down Lee Highway about 12 miles from town.
and asked him if he needed a ride home.
Jimmy said no, said he was on his way
to the Magic Kingdom in Florida.
The sheriff looked at the sky for a while
then said a big storm was headed their way
and maybe he should wait about a week
or two, and they stashed his bike in the trunk
and drove back to town. He was a sweet guy
with a good heart, loved animals, all kinds,
including mules, so when Jimmy arrived
and saw a mule on the tilted platform,
braying in terror, slipping off the edge,
he let go a scream godawful to hear,
but some thought it was godawful funny
and threw his bike in the pool with the mule,
causing him to choke back his scream and stand
stone still, stunned by betrayal, then take off
running, swinging his fists, parting the crowd
like Moses did the sea until someone
tripped him up and he tumbled in the pool
with the mule. Jimmy couldn’t swim a stroke
but somehow grabbed a hold of the mule’s tail
and hung on for about 15 seconds
while the panicked animal flailed water
until Jimmy let go and went under.
It took a while to pull him pull out and though
he was big and strong, he was damn near gone
if not gone already when we laid him
in trampled grass and started compressing
his heart while somebody called 911
and somebody tried to call his brother
and somebody called a preacher who called
upon Jesus to break death’s grip and bring
his simple child back to a world where mules
grazed unmolested and children flourished
sparklers and Jimmy Lambent’s heart went still.
Edison Jennings lives in Southern Appalachia and works as a Head Start classroom aide. His chapbook,Reckoning, and collection of poems,Intentional Fallacies, are available through Jacar Press and Broadstone Books, respectively.