Planted by the Signs. Misty Skaggs

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       Uncle Charlie Loves You

      I remember tired, washed-out women

      warning us young’uns

      with his name—

      “Uncle Charlie’s gonna come,

      gonna come all the way

      out here

      just to get you.”

      I remember we believed it.

      I remember the good ol’ boys

      rounding up a posse

      fueled by boredom

      and Pabst Blue Ribbon

      every damn time

      he went up for parole.

      He might get out,

      he might come home.

      No-Name Maddox,

      backwoods bastard,

      progeny of a prostitute

      with no paved streets to walk.

      He could’ve been one of them,

      with a Mamaw on Mauk Ridge.

      Might’ve been another nobody

      puffed up on Kentucky windage,

      bedding high school girls

      in the bed of a beat-up

      pickup truck

      saying,

      “I don’t know

      what somebody is.”

      Or maybe

      Uncle Charlie

      could’ve been a country preacher.

      A powerful, primitive Baptist

      running the church house like a family.

      A short feller filled

      plumb up to the brim

      with rural route righteousness,

      briar-hopping the pulpit

      instead of hitching to Haight-Ashbury.

      The Holy Spirit in his wild eyes

      instead of homicide.

      I know

      I hear Kentucky in his voice.

      Hiding in the space

      at the ends of words

      where consonants drop off

      and disappear.