Tag: object-driven poem
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Appalachian Funeral
I wrote Appalachian Funeral after driving past an abandoned church near the highway outside Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, where the wind carried dust from passing semis into the open doorway. The poem’s theme is the residue of faith and labor — how objects, not memory, hold the pressure of what’s gone.
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Free Fall
This poem began with the objects—door, hinge, roof, bucket—each one failing in its own small way. I wrote it to expose how the body carries damage the same way a house does: quietly, structurally, without asking for sympathy.
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Morove Cemetery
Morove Cemetery” began as a walk through memory and inheritance. I wanted to write a poem that refused sentimentality while still holding grief in its architecture. The poem is built from objects—signs, stones, flowers, fences—that carry the emotional weight without commentary. It’s a landscape elegy, where the dead are marked by what survives them: rust,…