Appalachia Awake

Appalachia Awake 1. The smell of rolls baking is enough to pull the heaviest sleeper from the most alluring dream. To awaken to the smell of buttery sweet flour is to return from being as far away as the soul can spin when it doesn't know where to call home. ii. I taste the hours of sun these beans drank in as they hung from thick thread on the back porch. I soak their shriveled shells and wait for them to cook, for their thick brown sweetness to pull me out of this city, this winter, back to the roadside stand where I handpicked the half-runners, to the afternoon where I learned there's a backside and front side to every bean. iii. That whistle, the way it winds through the night, is heavy as the coal cars rattling over the tracks. It is the cry of the earth blown apart, ripped open, the shine of light on its insides, the digging in, blasting away, pulling out. It is, some say, the sound of progress. —Julie Dunlop 43 ...