Loose Leaf Notes

“I have up and joined the Peace Corps,” begins the latest issue of Floyd County Moonshine.  In his editor’s preface Aaron Moore explains how joining the Peace Corp seemed like a nice thing to do.  He goes on to say, “Today I started quite possibly the first Hacky-sack English Speaking club in China.  In due time I will introduce tie dye t-shirts, biscuits and gravy, and Frisbee golf.”

Aaron may be in China but the Floyd based literary magazine he founded goes on like a long distance romance.   I imagine the Floyd creek and mountain view on the front cover of this issue, and the prose and poetry by new and established, regional and other writers on this side of the world might feel like letters from home to Aaron.

Browsing through the issue on a snowy afternoon with a hotly brewed cup of tea in hand, I wondered how anyone could not be compelled to read Essence of Skunk, Poets Just Want to Be Thirteen-year-old Girls, or For Christmas I’m Buying My Obsessive Compulsive Roommate More Hand Sanitizer by Luke Armstrong.  Armstrong, a contributing editor for the magazine The Expeditioner who currently lives in Guatemala, is featured heavily in the issue.  He has a knack for giving his poems intriguing titles.

I marked this stanza from his If the World Were Within Me I Would Stay Home:   The world is within you, says the Zen master/It is something you create. I do it, but with the ingenuity of/ An artist painting sunsets for paying tourists.

Native Floydian Richard Nester writes in a poem titled Salvage: at the big yard sale / of hope, it is amazing / what people / who have lost everything / will carry off. His poem Buffalo Laughter appeals to my sense of whimsy:  Every year the buffalo get / together like a bunch of old actors / There are only enough of them / left to make a movie.

Nester’s daughter-in-law, Robbi Nester, a writing teacher who lives in California, writes about Floyd’s own Will’s Ridge.  Your grandfather’s a mountain / Though he passed some time ago / his name endures, enshrined / on maps and part of local lore.

I was thoroughly taken by What Noma Meant to Say, a short story by Ronald Lands, a Tennessee doctor and writer who’s been nominated for Pushcart Award.  Set in a nursing home, the story starts:

Noma Gentry leaned on her walker and stared out the picture window overlooking the lawn that circled Shannondale like a moat.  She squinted her eyes, hunched her shoulders, and bent her knees a little, as if she was searching a half century of horizons back to the gray morning when she watched Hiram back the hay wagon into the barn for the last time.”

I read it the day after learning that my mother just had another small stroke.

Noma nodded her head slightly as if a memory of the music was trying to wriggle free from the plaques and tangles that held it submerged. Before her last stroke cauterized the speech area of her brain, she shuffled the halls and sang, “Some glad morning when this life is ov-er, I’ll fly away.” Sometimes, a burly man with a phlegmy cough echoed the bass refrain from down the hall, “in the morning.” After he died, she lowered her voice and sang it herself.

Being a regional publication, I know several of the writers featured, along with the photographers and artist Amity Dewey.   I heard my friend McCabe Coolidge’s voice as if he was reading his story about the death of his friend out loud in my head.

I like to read bios.  My actor/writer friend Rob Neukirch’s bio reads: Rob substitute teaches on a regular basis at Floyd Elementary School where he is best known for taking his thumb off and making coins and other small objects disappear. Rob has a short story in the issue titled In the Latter Stages that begins with the line I lost my parents in the divorce.

It’s also a pleasure to see my own photography and poetry in amongst the 69 pages.  I got a kick out of giving a copy to my son’s girlfriend for Christmas. She’s the elusive woman standing at the edge of the Blue Ridge Parkway escarpment in the photograph on page 16 titled The View.

If it keeps snowing and blowing I just might get through the whole magazine.  Sip by sip, I’m appreciating the local color of local literature. ~  Colleen Redman

Post notes:  Floyd County Moonshine can be purchased locally at the Harvest Moon, noteBooks, and The Floyd Country Store and online at their website HERE. Read more about the Moonshine HERE and HERE.