Willie Carver

You Kids Be Quiet
 
Before my mamaw said to hush
and we might just hear the stars
I had never known
the holy whisper rolling in
a chorus of a thousand baritones
ripping the skin off the sky
tearing it from hill to hill
its fresh wound trilling down
in drenching bursts of buzzing life
calling up chords of lightning bugs
harmonies slipping in drunken flits
echoing between the trailer and creek
drawn west in the husky undertow
of the dense rumble of the darkness
 


Post Office Walk
 
My mom would walk with her friend Joanne
along the rusting spine of railroad track
to the country post office for her daily mail
and when kindergarten faded away
and summer swelled fat across the holler
fizzing over its edges with green noise
she said I was finally big
enough to walk with them.

In the pleasure of new fields unfolding
between the railroad ties and creeks
I shouted hello to rocks and trees
to know the rushing freedom of my voice
feeling its way across the expanding world–
and then a voice returned. Hello.
My hand found my mom’s leg
My mom’s hand found my head.
It’s just a raven that lives over there.
They found it hurt and it can’t fly.
Do you want to meet him?

An old woman let us on a porch
and on the porch a giant cage
and in the cage a giant bird
his head turned and tilted to take me in
his black eye reflecting the morning sunshine
his liquid wings slicked back against his body.
I reached my finger towards the cage.
Wings and beak fly back. He screams,
              Help me! Help me!
his dry raven consonants cutting the air
his rasping pulls of tight snipped vowels
crying words that I could already spell.
It’s okay. He’s just scared.
A bunch of little boys hurt him once.

We left the porch and walked home.
I held my mom’s hand the whole way.

Willie Carver is a Kentucky Teacher of the Year, an author, and a public speaker. His work has been featured in 100 Days in Appalachia, Another Chicago Magazine, Smoky Blue Literary Magazine, Miracle Monocle, Good River Review, and Salvation South, among others. His collection of narrative poems, Gay Poems for Red States, has been named a Book Riot Best Book of 2023, An American Booksellers Associations must-have book of 2023, a Top Ten Best Book of Appalachia, an Over-The-Top Book by the American Library Association, and was named a 2024 Stonewall Honor Book.