“This is my best regards to you
I have started for the kiser
dont you think I havnt”
— postcard from Great Uncle Lester
One day he was husking the corn,
feeding the greedy, muddy pigs,
plowing with mules the steep and rocky
hillsides of Pike County, Kentucky,
calling gee for right, haw for left,
and whoa, damn you, whoa,
to make everything slow down,
the next day halfway around the world
in Paris with the prostitutes of Pigalle,
his fellow soldiers from Detroit,
Chicago digging at him, to unearth
his puzzlement, his mountain dialect.
Where you from, soldier? Pike County.
That ain’t no place. I mean what town?
But how do you say you’re from somewhere
when you were born at home on a farm?
The next day mired in confused
trough trenches of muddy slop,
fields plowed and furrowed
with harrowing shells, scattered husks
of what was left of his friends,
the next day back in Pike County
slopping the hogs, begging the world
to stop whirling so fast, dizzy
from the ride, thinking wait a minute,
wait a minute, whoa, damn you, whoa.
Dorothy Sutton
Richmond