Appalachian Spine

Appalachian Spine

My brother once pulled a crawfish

from the stream. He held it in his

hands, gave it a name, and kept it in a

tank outside – but it froze that night.

~

I hear the echoes of the South. My

birthplace, the stage for my becoming.

I owe Appalachia for my grits, my spine,

my gift for comforting others.

~

But I know about the words carved on trees

marking the purest form of destructive love.

I know for whom the church bells ring.

I know the clay is red for two reasons.

*

Can a crawfish survive an overnight freeze?

Should we have let the water thaw before

discarding the tiny body in the morning?

Or was this death unrecoverable?

~

Unlearning is an act of self-love.

But I understand hesitation to turn

the pickaxe on your own foundation.

To let yourself thaw and see…

~

Schrödinger tell me, do you

cut away the roots that drank poison

instead of love. Drank poison and love?

Dead or alive – are you unfrozen?

*

I see dead crawfish when I think

some things are better left alone.

But what if there was a chance?

There is still unlearning to do.

~

Author's Note

I was born and raised in North Carolina, which contains a portion of the Appalachian Mountain range and is the setting of this poem. The title of this piece was inspired by a line in the book "Overstory" by Richard Powers - where the Appalachian mountain range was described as a long spine. I loved the idea of an Appalachian spine and thought it was an excellent image and metaphor for growing up in the South.

This poem was my very first attempt to write about the complexities of being raised in the Southern United States. I grew up around a lot of love - the tea was sweet, and the people were feisty and joyful. However, I also grew up exposed to a lot of hate. Many people around me held beliefs drenched in sexism, racism, religious discrimination, and homophobia.

As I matured into my own, I struggled to come to terms with some of the messages I was taught growing up. Even before I left my hometown, I started to feel my heart splitting. I had been taught love and kindness, but I also had to witness how the people around me stopped extending that love and kindness to my friends - because they were gay, or because they had different thoughts about God. I decided to leave the only state I'd known when I went to college, and each time I traveled back to my hometown, I felt more and more distant.

The story of the crawfish is a true story from my childhood. My brother found the crawfish in the streams by our childhood home and named him Jeffrey (or maybe it was Bob). A cold snap occurred on poor Jeffrey's first night with us and the entire tank froze and was thrown away by my mother in the morning.

Remembering this story helped me structure the poem, and ultimately, helped me structure some of my thoughts about my upbringing. I now openly and unabashedly condemn the sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise discriminatory beliefs that surrounded me in my youth. Instead I have leaned more into kindness, human rights, and human dignity. I have grown a lot. But I am also still growing, still learning, and still shedding the residue of harmful belief systems. I think it's important to acknowledge where we came from, and how it's affected us. How else will we realize that we have some unlearning to do?

~

This poem was originally published by Bourgeon Magazine (Online) along with two other of my poems in April 2021. You can find all three poems by clicking the link below. However, the author's note and related insights about this story are original to Vocal.