Seneca, South Carolina

Amalia Culp

Excerpted from from a book-length work of prose poetry, Dolorem Ipsum, inspired by Nabokov’s Lolita.

 

Seneca, South Carolina
August, Age 7

 
The Appalachian foothills
at the end of the Blue Ridge Escarpment
are the oldest mountains in the world.

Solid granite, their surface bare and rough,
grey that absorbs light,
flecks of white and black that repel it.

At a distance, in every kind of weather,
they are cobalt blue.

In the rain,
in midday sun that bleaches paint
and even the brightest flowers.

In winter,
whose light turns the forest
to brown and purple-grey.

Their color is there in the brightest and lowest light,
but like mist it appears far away
even when it surrounds you on all sides.

–

To the left on the road into town,
the arms of Twelve-Mile Creek
meet in a ditch filled with kudzu vines.
The flea market is in the empty field
every Wednesday.

It starts at four in the morning
Because it is cooler then,
And the farmers have to work after.
The field is a mile long and half a mile deep.
By eight it is completely full of cars,
Trucks, trailers, tables and people.
By eleven everyone is packed up leaving.

You can buy anything.
Live chickens, pigs, fish,
a house, any kind of vehicle,
small motors, tools,
new or a hundred years old.

Three men sell only rope across three tables.
A hundred kinds of fishing line, heavy cotton string,
Steel cable you need two hands to lift.
If you ask, they will give you faded pages
That teach you how to tie knots
In the kind of rope you bought.

An Amish woman sells her collection of Tupperware
A dish for every occasion; martini glasses,
containers for a single slice of pie,
popsicle molds, hot dog containers.
Her husband sells fresh fruit pies,
cold cans of soda, and soda-can airplanes,
mobiles, and weathervanes.

A shrimper named James
Drives 500 miles to the coast and back every Tuesday.
He used to work on the boats
That come through the marshes,
Up the river to John’s Island
Selling to seafood restaurants
Waiting on the inland docks.

He will sell them picked or unpicked, and
No matter how many pounds you want,
He will finish the job in front of you
Before you have done chatting.

He slides his thumb under the shrimp’s spiky head,
Draws out the black dorsal vein,
Flicks it into a pile,
Which you can take home for shrimp stock if you want.

Teenagers give away newborn puppies
And kittens and baby chicks
From cardboard boxes near the entrance.

–

The woods are shot through with Native American trails.

One leads down to a creek
That bounds my grandparents’ pasture.
You can follow it to a secret waterfall
At the base of the hill.

If you sit at the top
just ahead of the falls
And aim correctly,
A thin curtain of water
Will carry you all along the rock face
Down a sluice, between two huge boulders
Into the broad, shallow flow of the river.

Then if you walk along the water,
Across the road separating us from our nearest neighbors,
On through more pasture and woods
And across the big road to Atlanta,
You find the only flat land for miles around
In a valley still called by its Cherokee name : Eastatoee.

Deep in the woods are hidden whiskey stills,
Operating for generations
Outside all law.

Children in that part of the world are lookouts.
They spread out in every direction,
Amateur geologists, mushroom-hunters, bird-watchers.
They tell intruders tall tales of copperhead nests.