poems by

Phebe Davidson

Poetry chapbook, 48 pages, cover price $10

($7 if ordered from the MSR Online Bookstore)

ISBN: 978-1-59948-220-0

Release date: 2010

Phebe Davidson is a staff writer for the Asheville Poetry Review, former Reviews Editor of Yemassee, and a member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors. Her poems and reviews appear in a range of print and electronic venues including The Cortland Review, Cadillac Cicatrix, The Asheville Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Blue Earth Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry East, Review Revue, and Ekphrasis. She is the author of nineteen published collections of poems, most recently Fat Moon Rising from Main Street Rag Publishing Co. A new book of poems, The Surface of Things, will be published in 2009 by David Robert Books. She lives in Westminster, SC with her husband Steve and their cat Fripp.

Whether in prose poems or poems in form, Phebe Davidson has a gift for capturing the beauty of life, especially in the natural world, even as she acknowledges life’s fleetingness. She is a remarkable poet.

Ron Rash

ROAD
slips into morning light
warms itself in sun

sidewinds down a slope or two
leaves sift back to night

moon is up it silvers
moon is down it feeds

oncet I seen it shed its skin
oncet I seen it sleep

road keeps secrets
circles hills

loops itself like snake
close your eyes behind the wheel

be lucky if you wake

SOMEBODY’S MOTHER
is hanging out wash. It’s a long time ago.
Her best petticoat, an organdy waist, a quiet skirt.

Time was she could see the river from here,
even in July, but trees grew with the years to block

the view. Now, in mid-November, they are
all she sees. She hears cars passing, boxy and square.

Sometimes a backfire, a driver’s curse when
the crank kicks. The brilliant rush of foothill fall

is done already. The younger boy’s shirt stiffens
on the line, something she will iron tonight when it’s

quiet. She thinks how tall her firstborn grew:
He ought not have been driving so late and so fast.

The house smells of nutmeg and apple. She will
need to go in before long, but now she pegs the grown

son’s shirt to her line. Tomorrow they will all
of them dress without shame. She thinks of her boy

settled safe beneath the dirt, the sturdy box
to keep him dry. Overalls, workshirts, a faded dress.

So many things washed and waiting her hand.
All winter pale ghost leaves will cling to the beech.

Come spring she will fall to her knees in this yard.
Her weeping will go on for years.

AGAIN THE QUIET
Wind is low. He cannot sleep. Wakeful
Under sky and stars he tries to think it through.

A yellow fox barks once and stops.
Strands of web enmesh his bed.

He tells himself I’m home. I’m home.
He thinks. He shudders, sinks at last

into moveless sleep. Who will see
the moon grow wide and who will tell it true?

The silent hall. The shadowed wall.
Boys dying at his side. He hears the geese.

He fears what comes. No ease. No sweet release.
The wind is low. He cannot sleep.

Memory leaches into dream.
He cannot find relief.