| Author | Message | ||
| M
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3707 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention The House of Spirits Jim Doss I come alone to walk these red clay fields of my ancestors, squeeze the clods of dirt until they burst into a powder that colors the rivers of my hands with a confluence of fates. Feral goats surround me chewing skunkweed and scratching their heads against cedar fence posts set by my grandfather’s hand, descendents like me of a dark time when a family of seven lived in this old cabin that sinks in a sea of swaying weeds, a Sargasso of forgetfulness. I touch rusty nails that hold these boards together; run my hands along the gaps between each grey plank wider than two fingers; look through the doorway for signs of the ghosts that used to live here, those spirits who won’t let my body invent itself. Across the dirt floor, splashes of black linger where pinto beans and collard greens simmered. A broken chair half-buried where the family ate. Dark stains of oil lamps flare on the walls leading to the stair-ladder and a loft of tiny bedrooms filled with stars and wind. I can see a bride of fourteen and her thirty-five-year-old husband, joined by hard mountain ways. They greet me with a suspicion reserved only for strangers, yet offer food and a blanket for the night. Here a girl in a blue print dress sits crying in the dirt, the head of her china doll smashed against the doorframe by jealous brothers. Fragments of the doll’s hand-painted blue eyes sparkle by my feet. Their stories flow through me from this house to the orphanage to the broken homes, join my own story, these rivers that run through my hands, and I step inside under a roof that sags and creaks like the back of an old plow horse, to be born again into this family when it was still a family. |
