“As he farmed, hard labor left his hands callused, the sun bleached his hair, his face leathered, and his heart throbbed with music.”

“As he farmed, hard labor left his hands callused, the sun bleached his hair, his face leathered, and his heart throbbed with music.”

“As I string, a swift rhythm is played out with my hands, a cadence known only to those who have strung tobacco. To many of the poor workers, the meter and rhythm of stringing tobacco is the only poetry they’ve ever known.”

“He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember.”

“The wind whirls and whistles and strip pink blooms from the mimosas, scatters twigs, broken limbs, pine needles and pine cones across our yard, and robs the pecan trees of a thousand leaves. The storm eventually dies, but the bruised trees continue to weep into the night, still shimmering with dewy leaves when the sun comes up the next morning.”

“With red clay between my toes,and the sun setting over my head,the ghost of my mother blows in,riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,riding on a honeysuckle breeze.”

“I’m not made for city streets. My brogans drop soil from the field behind me, each grain of dirt like a seed revealing who I am. My heart belongs in the country. I’m a farmer, and I was shaped in the fields.”

“Ask me about my childhood, and I will tell you to walk to the edge of the woods with a choir of crickets chirping from every direction, a hot, humid breeze brushing through your hair, your feet, bare and callused. Stand there, unmoving, and watch the dance of ten thousand fireflies blinking on and off in the darkness. Inhale the scent of cured tobacco, freshly plowed southern soil, burning leaves, and honeysuckle. Swallow the taste of blackberries, picked straight from the bushes, and lick your teeth, the after-taste still sweet in your mouth. Now, stretch out on the ground and relax all your muscles. Watch nature's festival of flickering lights.”

“By noon, silence arrives one last time, flowing into every space of her room. And before long, silence swallows sound and color and seconds and equations and entire stanzas of old poetry, leaving new words. The sheets are breathless. The room is bruised.My mother is still warm.”

“She struts into the hair salon, her mouth filled with a rotten egg of gossip, unshelled, filled with decay. As soon as she sits down she bites into the shell, and the stink of her lies fills the air, its goo dripping down her chin. With her new haircut she exits, leaving behind the putrid evidence that she’s as corrupt as the egg of lies she spread.”

“I could go to a dozen houses, scrape away the dirt, and find his footprints, but my own prints evaporated before I ever looked back.”

“Songs. Books. Poetry. Paintings. These things reveal truth. I believe lies and truth are tangled together.”