Manure Pit

make you memorize/ the names of coal strikes? Steel leaders?/ tell you the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company?/ the chicken factory in Hamlet, NC?" (11. 13-16). These lines, though not imagistically her strongest, suggest the importance of her poetry. In "Release of the Spirit," she documents her role as poet of Appalachian uprootness and human loss: "We are the children whose fathers learned/the world is flat. After work there's nothing/ but the heart's quiet roar" (11. 25-28). Of the women who came with the men, she says: Our mothers were Saguaro cacti learning to live without dancing clear streams rushing down crying purple mountains, learning to accept the mill's lattice of steel cables knowing they must turn brown to conserve water so we, their daughters, could bloom. ("Desert Flowers" 11. 21-24, 26-27) Like the grandmother-seer in Blind Horse, Bryner reveals to us the "terrible beauty" of life's pain. Living and writing on the fringes of Appalachia, she enables us all to see the core of truth. Works Cited Bryner, Jeanne. Blind Horse. Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog Press. Working Lives Series, 1999. —. Breathless. Kent, Ohio and London: Kent State University Press, 1995. —. Saguaro. Ohio: Self-Published [gift for daughter], 2000. Chitwood, Michael. The Weave Room. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Rash, Ron. Eureka Mill. Corvallis, Oregon: Bench Press, 1998. Manure Pit Midnight, and the dog's bark is a rake Scraping a blackboard, not the neighbor's dog, Not ours, we yawn, turn over, a semi truck passes, 36 Rattles our windows, smothers the dog's raspy prayer. Next day, floral sheets and underwear hang On the line, clean taste of wooden pins like cigars In my mouth. Bark, Bark, Bark, Bark, weak, brave gasps But, where? I chop onions, mix beef and eggs For meatloaf, you open the door, hug me, a newspaper Under your arm. Honey, I keep hearing that dog, Beyond the backyard, please, go. You track The chain of yelps and barks clear To the barn's manure pit (it holds thousands of gallons Of liquid shit). A small black dog has fallen in Treads fear and the smelly muck, keeps his chin up, To breathe. Grinding in the tool shed, you find Our farmer neighbor. How to catch the dog's red Collar? pull him to safety? Some kind hook Fastened to a handle? Men working together You ladled the dog nearer, almost close, then The hoe slipped off, you lunged, your right Hand grabbed his neck's collar, his furry body Slick with cow dung. Never mind you thought To bring him home, bathe him. Straight away He shook himself and ran and ran and ran Far away from all of it. Who can say if he lived? How many more verses he might have sang? Balm of motor oil on your palms, then bleach And twenty sinks full of hot, soapy water. Nothing Quiets the stench of your hand. The phone rang, Our neighbor answered, I know, I know What you want me to tell you; it's your hand How evil it smells. There's nothing to be done. Scrubbing hard helps, and time. He is King of Barns, The bard of bad odors. We don't doubt his wisdom. No hero's plaque waits for you, no reporter's interview. Where's the blame? I can't remember the teachers' Names who saw guns and took bullets for their students. One was a woman, pregnant, the others, men, fathers Of sons and daughters, but I can't, no matter how hard I try, see their faces or spell the names of those towns. There's so much shit in the world, a person just wants To shake it off and run and run and run. —Jeanne Bryner 37 ...