‘Knee Deep,’— A Collection of Poetry & Prose
Named after my first standalone poem written in May 2025, ‘Knee Deep’ is a collection of poetry and prose rooted in Appalachian language, iconography, and colloquial speech.
‘Young Bucks’
We weren’t gonna make it through the year.
I remember you there, beneath low-hanging beech branches and scattered patches of wildrye. In the hazy twilight of an exhausted summer sun, you stood—hollow, yet heavy all at once.
Half stud, half tragedy.
Your tawny, grizzled fur clung to the contours of your ribcage, each bowed bone more pronounced than the last. Your eyes, wide and raw like open wounds, met mine in quiet ache.
Two young bucks, condemned to lock antlers and bleed, content with each other’s company.
Begging ourselves to be fierce, succumbing to our fragility. I had never wanted anything more than to graze beside you.
The velvet on our antlers gave way as we learned to caress our tines against one another—gentle, wordless.
We convinced ourselves as men while kissing the fading white spots scattered across each other's torsos,
knowing that standing broad-shouldered beside you in speckled sunlight left me broadside to a clean shot.
So now, as I lay here in a red-splattered mess at the end of my blood trail, I try not to think of what could’ve happened to you.
Your antlers might end up mounted on a wood-paneled wall in dim light—bleached, barren excuses for trophies.
They might become scattered beneath fallen white oaks, among mayapples and sodden earth.
They might bake idly beside the hot cement of a four-lane, still attached to your remains, matted fur still clinging in stillness.
But they’ll never entangle with mine again.
Our brow tines will never interlock.
The crowns of our heads will never brush together.
And I realize, in slow, grasping breaths,
that in a world of bullets and broadheads,
two pairs of antlers too often entwined
were always going to end up in someone’s crosshairs.
To love me is to suffer me.
I hoped I’d die before you,
and now, I am dying.
I’d rather lie stiff and decaying in sleep
than wake up on my own.
I hoped you loved me the way I loved you.
In my last heaves, I am desperate for you.
And as I suffer, I’m comforted only by knowing
we were never meant to make it through the year.
Still, this was all for you.
‘Young Bucks,’ Charcoal on Handmade Paper, 2025
‘easy to hate, easy to blame’
‘Trashed’
There’s an old, trashed recliner
just off the bank of some ridge top,
down on County Road 44.
Faded corduroy the color of bacon grease
stretches across brittle steel bones,
slouched in tree-dappled sunlight,
hardly conscious.
The mildewed arms are littered
with the wounds of extinguished cigarette butts,
scarring through bleached, threadbare fabric.
No ridgetop rainstorm or scorching sunbeam
can wash out the sweat stains
or lift the weight left in that seat cushion—
bruises embedded long before
it got tossed from some old truck bed.
That recliner’s seen better days.
Ain’t got no use no more.
There’s a numbing comfort in being trashed.
In baking under a maple haze,
just out of view.
The rusted springs beneath the footrest
would prop themselves up for eternity
if they could.
Time blurs from dawn to dusk,
but that recliner still manages
to feel every throbbing second—
unaware of its skirted base
sinking deeper into leaf rot
and gripping mud.
God, I want to get trashed—
again and again—
so damn bad
I’m jealous of that recliner.
That roadside numbness…
you just can’t beat that feeling.
God knows I’ve tried.
‘Wild Raspberry & Goldenrod’
Pinch the berry loose from the cane;
it drops willingly
soft as rain
into your palm.
Raise it, warm it with your breath,
a moment’s embrace.
Bite down—
sweetness,
seed between your teeth,
and tartness,
swallowed before the taste
can settle.
Wild raspberry ferally flourishes
in ground that has been rendered,
wounded, abandoned.
Soft green shoots claim the hillsides
of once frost-stiff soil
unrestrained.
We found one another
when God forgot mercy.
I cherished growing
alongside you.
Our spring emergence,
entangled youth
of bramble and bloom.
You were my girl first.
The gentle warmth of sunbeams
coaxing my dewed flesh
and tender thorns
to redden,
urging your budding crown
and yellowing petals
to reach upward.
I cherished growing
alongside you.
Hold me
tapered diamonds of green.
Brave my briars,
endure my thorns
I promise
our roots intertwine
not to choke,
but to remind you
I will always
love you.
In fading hours
of summer twilight,
I can see the end
in everything.
Amidst my barbed form,
sweetness dappled my skin—
all yours,
mine the bitterness.
Please don’t leave me,
I will always
love you.
I lose myself,
as ripened sweetness detaches
and decays
upon our healing earth.
You keep growing,
gracing the wind
with aromatic elegance.
I will stay
the same.
My briared fingertips
embed themselves
in the earth.
I crawl forth
unnoticed,
too proud to admit
I am happy for you.
Your floral radiance
flowering uncontested.
Grow tall
and confident—
I will stay
the same.
Oh goldenrod,
the autumn air deserves you
as you deserve the wind—
revered and adored,
you are worth remembering.
I know you’ve faced the world upright,
gilded petals and all,
towering above me,
but you were my sister first.
Oh goldenrod,
savor the taste
of my final offering.
Allow me
to falter
and sway gently
as I bleed.
Remember
you were my sister first.
The first frost
will claim us yet again,
browning our ribs,
slowing our veins.
Remember me.
In a fleeting moment,
bite down—
sweetness,
seed between your teeth,
and tartness,
swallowed before the taste
can settle.
I will wait
beneath hardpacked dirt,
beneath banks of snow,
for an early spring
to admire you
ascending again,
now acres apart.
I cherished growing
alongside you.
‘Knee Deep’
Ask any man with soft, uncalloused palms
and eyes trained on concrete slabs
instead of our jagged hills—
He’ll tell you
“coal” is a dirty word.
He’ll have something to say
about the rusted-orange tinge
bleeding from the graves
of scattered mines
here in southeastern Ohio.
He’ll preach some sermon
wallowing in his saviorism,
lecturing in a room
still lit, cooled, and powered
by coal.
He may be knee deep in bullshit,
convinced by some opportunistic version of clean,
but he ain’t knee deep
in the creek bed.
—
Ask any man with deep pockets
and a hankerin’ to fill ’em—
He’ll tell you
coal’s making a comeback.
Whether acid, gas, or rock,
there’s money to be made
from the residue of our black diamonds.
He’ll have something to say
about our vacant storefronts,
the settled dust
of small coal town economies
in the ‘other’ America.
He’ll pity us—
but he wouldn’t dream
of sparing a damn dime
to a redneck
in good enough shape
to blacken his own lungs.
He may be knee deep in pursuit
of the American Dream—
all white collars, handshakes,
and coaxing smiles—
but he ain’t knee deep
in the creek bed.
Our mines may bleed,
orange instead of red,
but at least
they’re still bleeding.
Desperate,
but alive.
Condemned,
but resilient.
Our roots run deep in this land,
anchored in the Clarion coal seam—
the seam our kinfolk worked
to give their children,
and their children’s children,
a better chance.
A chance we have
the privilege of taking.
—
So while the high and mighty
keep bitchin’
about what’s dirty
and what’s clean—
We’re still here,
knee deep
in the creek bed.
Our legs outstretched,
breaking the tension
of the water’s rippling surface.
And our soles
are still gonna stain
that rusted orange.