Terry L. Kennedy is the author of the collection New River Breakdown (Unicorn Press, 2014) and the limited edition chapbook, Until the Clouds Shatter the Light that Plates Our Lives (Jeanne Duval Editions). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cave Wall, O. Henry Magazine, The Oxford American, The Southern Review, and Waccamaw, among others. He teaches at the University of […]
I admit that I’m afraid of the way the city here is cordoned off in unpredictable manners & means, and of those who speak of love as if it could separate, bead off the skin like loosed mercury: if it seeps beneath, there is damage; if we continue along, shining, there is damage—but who among […]
There are differences between that rare warm day in winter and what we expect when March blows in, just as the rip-currents of desire have more to do with water than air, though the temptation to burst is suffered by dogwoods & daffodils both each false spring—these are the secrets you tell me after making […]
And when it was finally over, I was happy for the silence there, and the dark—when eating blackberries by the side of the road, I had no one to share them with but myself; and when the late-summer showers left an insular Glenwood neatly installed in the bank of the river, its enameled surface turned […]
Something about the weight of weather in summer, mid-morning, that reminds the lips of desire and the cruel, measured drip of time. And it’s true, back then, when I came home, whenever that was, no one was waiting at the window; nobody cared. And yet, here, among the just-hung wash, I feel as heavy as […]
Your voice, without buzz or notice, brought news; thank you. Here, for weeks, everywhere, freed by pickaxe & shovel, mud: the atmosphere so pregnant with its iron, you can taste it on your lips—any day now, the letting—but this morning, sweat glistering my rough-raw hands, I remembered our first transgressions: your saying, what matters most, […]
And so I’ll sing that yellow bird’s song For the troubled times will soon be gone. –Gillian Welch I. Spring’s first flowers are pushing through this lonely wall of winter— such simplicity: two notes, an Epiphone and it’s 1935, again. II. The highway and the brick house have vanished with the morning dew, and the […]
I don’t know who I thought I was back then, but the afternoon sun sifted through the Spanish moss that curled from the trees with the natural grace of girls in August. It could be like that: the breeze fanning the gnats from the palms, the palms lulling the stars to sleep. I wanted to […]