“The Selvage” by Linda Gregerson 1 So door to door among the shotgun shacks in Cullowhee and Waynesville in our cleanest shirts and ma’am and excuse me were all but second nature now and this one woman comes to the door she must have weighed three hundred pounds Would you be willing to tell us who you plan to vote for we say and she turns around with Everett who’re we voting for? The black guy says Everett. The black guy she says except that wasn’t the language they used they used the word we’ve all agreed to banish from even our innermost thought, which is when I knew he was going to win. 2 At which point the speaker discovers, as if the lesson were new, she has told the story at her own expense. Amazing, said my sister’s chairman’s second wife, to think what you’ve amounted to considering where you’re from. which she meant as a compliment. One country, friends. Where when we have to go there, as, depend upon it, fat or thin, regenerate or blinkered-to-the-end, we shall, they have to take us in. I saw 3 a riverful of geese as I drove home across our one-lane bridge. Four hundred of them easily, close-massed against the current and the bitter wind (some settled on the ice) and just the few at a time who’d loosen rank to gather again downstream. As if to paraphrase. The fabric every minute bound by just that pulling-out that holds the raveling together. You were driving all this time? said Stephen. Counting geese? (The snow falling into the river.) No. (The river about to give itself over to ice.) I’d stopped. Their wingspans, had they not been taking shelter here, as wide as we are tall. ------------------------------------------------------------ From “The Selvage” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: New York, 2012) Linda Gregerson will be our guest speaker at our Barrie Cropper Lecture on the craft of creative writing on Thurs, Sept 19 at 12:30pm in KIPJ Conf Rm D, and also will be reading from her poetry at our Lindsay J. Cropper Memorial Writers Series on Fri, Sept 20th at 7:00pm in Manchester Conf. Ctr. The English Dept posts a poem every Tuesday. Our po
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 23:37:35 +0000
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