Honey bucket baptisms with blind melon sewage fruit. Denver floorboards & debts that hide behind water tank girls. Rolls out hip angel nightmares begging for the cure. Whiskey as a daily remedy with no added bonus of learning that your friend has stiches from snitches. Matchbook warming & warning of tables with old comic strips. Pirates were the slavers, not the freedom fighters.
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A response to the weather disaster of Helene in western NC: a bioregion left without water or resources, or a combination of both, for extended amounts of time. Cafes and upscale restaurants provided the community with free meals. Though the emergency has passed, some are still providing the community with a free dinner option. This sparks outrage with the occasional diner that pays to eat. Both standing in line and receiving the same meal, more or less, yet one pays, and the other does not. It brings the regional class issue to the forefront and uncovers what was lost from the shadows.
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Impermanence on the frontier of the mind allows worldly travel across time zones and political boundaries without need for consent. Where is home. Heartsickness & absence of the familiar morning routine. Does one replace the living room with the international backdrop of fast-food chains and box-stores. Familiar landscape is the hamster wheel. Yet to break it is to remain still and known. What is the path forward. Taco Bell is the buffalo. Banana dirt revives the desire for water and the longing of the tongue. We desire sustenance. We wait for rain.
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I relocated back to Asheville NC post Hurricane Helene. I have discovered that much of the River Arts district remains destroyed almost a year later. Shells of washed-up automobiles and warnings about looting are here as memorabilia of our love for what was lost. Life rafts are hidden in the surrounding woods with tents and salvation army as a night light. Fireflies are rebuilding their numbers.
There are suggestions of abandonment felt by anger just beneath the surface. Alternate economies emerge as infrastructure wanes. Competition reigns as king with flies buzzing: its message and warning. Appalachia has always been on its own. Blue collar and underground rail foreman whip those that are left into shape. Water recedes like a fading hairline of a high-school sweet-heart gone grey. These are weathered streets with secrets revealed now that there is no more distraction.
What lasts she asks…
Appalachia…
he replies.
derive of environs 