Affrilachia by Frank X Walker
For Gurney & Anne
thoroughbred racing and hee haw are burdensome images for kentucky sons venturing beyond the mason-dixon
anywhere in appalachia is about as far as you could get from our house in the projects yet a mutual appreciation for fresh greens and cornbread an almost heroic notion of family and porches makes us kinfolk somehow but having never ridden bareback or sidesaddle and being inexperienced at cutting hanging or chewing tobacco yet still feeling complete and proud to say that some of the bluegrass is black enough to know that being “colored” and all is generally lost somewhere between the dukes of hazzard and the beverly hillbillies but if you think makin’ ’shine from corn is as hard as kentucky coal imagine being an Affrilachian poet











