Memoirs of Daily Life
Things fall apart, life gets tough — but in the stories we tell we get back up | JULY 2, 2022
WELCOME to the July 2022 edition of WestVirginiaVille, whose theme is “Memoirs of Daily Life.” Some are as light-hearted as a turtle mission of mercy out on Pluto Road. Others dive deeply into the disaster to individual lives from the headlines screaming their bad news right now on our timelines. Yet in the stories we tell and poems we share, we find companionship, shared purpose, and a glint of dawn after a long, dark night. Read and share onwards.
PS: If you value this wide-ranging, still-free multimedia magazine, support our efforts to avoid being one of those ad-cluttered, frantically busy sites by clicking this donation link or any of the red buttons at the website. If this newsletter was forwarded your way, free subscribe at: westvirginiaville.substack.com | And thank you! | Douglas John Imbrogno, Editor
1 | EDITORS/NOTE: About ‘Memoirs of Daily Life’ | To devote so many pages and pixels to writers, poets, and memoirists and their dispatches from the front lines of their lives — or the imagined lives of characters — is not to step back from More Important Things. Poetry and prose are no less a form of truth-telling than the best investigative reports.
2 | 5 QUESTIONS: For Two Poets Who Keep Running With Whiskey | How did West Virginia’s Poet Laureate plus a creative writing professor/poet/musician end up “Running With Whiskey” all across West Virginia and the world? We have questions, they have answers. Plus, of course, poems.
3 | FIRST/PERSON: Turtle Rescue Out on Pluto Road | by Joseph “Billy” Corduroy : “The first time I tried to save a turtle on the move it peed — or pooped, I’m not sure which — in my truck. I had stopped when I saw a box turtle in the middle of Pluto Road one afternoon. I hit my brakes right there in traffic. Fortunately, there was no traffic ….”
4 | POETICS: 3 Poems by James Cochran | ‘She says Jesus / has spoken to her, told her not to drink coffee / or Redbull, that black tea is okay. / I feel jealous of such direct communication / with a higher power, then wonder if I would / stop drinking coffee if Jesus told me to …’
5 | SHORT/STORY: “Salena” | by Jay Brackenrich : “Salena had never had anything beautiful, certainly never anything perfect. The nuns wrapped her in perfect clean blankets. She had a little cotton shirt, perfect. They asked for the name of the father. She said, “I don’t know.” They entered ‘Unknown’ into the blank box.”
6 | WATCH LIST: Some things to look at, West Virginia-wise | Check out this version of variations on “Country Roads” by the Kanawha Valley Community Band which channels Aaron Copland; plus a video of a crazy fitness guy sledding around Charleston WV; the future of all our striving & more.
7 | READINGS: “Montani Semper …. Snapshots from an Appalachian Family Album” | by Ty Bouldin : Take a read on a WestVirginiaVille experiment in publishing longish excerpts from worthy, well-written books with a West Virginia connection, such as “Montani Semper …”
8 | FIRST/PERSON: A few highly personal words on choice | by Anonymous : “Three pregnancies. No choice in any of them. I have never chosen to get pregnant. I was foolish, I was sucker-punched, I was surprised. I was naïve, I was savvy. I wasn’t ready, I was ready. Such a basic right that everyone deserves. CHOICE.”
9 | MEMOIR: Why trappers with bloody hides wanted in my house | by Connie Kinsey: “One morning, I stumbled down to the kitchen when I heard a noise. There standing was an unkempt man holding bloody hides and smoking a cigarette. “Excuse me?” “I’m looking for Frank,” he said.
10 | POETICS: 3 Poems by Marc Harshman | ‘A fiddle tune bearing, rough-shod, / the memory of the village: / sunlight on stucco, / leaf-plastered paths in autumn, / spectral sheep / in moonlight and bracken, / the lilt of the market tongue, / ancient beyond telling …’
11 | PICTURE/SHOW: Traces of Faces in West Virginia Places | by Douglas John Imbrogno: Here’s a selective round-up of people snapped, doing their thing on the streets, in the alleys, and in the shops of West Virginia’s cities, towns, and outback.
12 | POETICS: 3 Poems by Doug Van Gundy | ‘These are the hours I love the best, / when the golden light of summer has climbed / to the top of the abandoned building next door / and all of the neighborhood / cats have come out from the woodpile / beneath the back porch to carouse and fight …’.
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