Spring 2017

Book Review: One Man’s Dark (Manning)

Maurice Manning. One Man’s Dark. Port Townsend, Wa.: Copper Canyon Press, 2016. 110 pages. Hardcover. $23.00. On the cover of One Man’s Dark, Maurice Manning’s superb new collection of poems, appears a sepia photograph of the interior of an empty tobacco barn, sunlight visible on and through the spaced boards…

Murmuration

She left a little at a time. The way the starlings do, lifting from a line off into nowhere, one by one until they’re gone completely. First was the index finger on her right hand. She was numb from sugar, so she didn’t notice when it started to cook. That smell that…

Snake Cane

Norman Amos Sometimes Virginia Creeper, a tendril of honeysuckle or wild grape, will wind around the limb of a young hickory and, as both grow, squeeze its spiral into the wick. Old women who tap the ground before they walk, ready to rap danger on its head, tobacco farmers well-versed…