Thursday’s Child

poems by

Sue Weaver Dunlap

~ 90 pages, $15 (+ shipping)

Projected Release Date: May/June 2025

An Advance Sale Discount price of $9 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $14/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412. 

PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.

Sue Weaver Dunlap, a multi-generation Southern Appalachian, lives in Walland, Tennessee, on a mountain farm with her husband Raymond. Publications include Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Kakalak, Women Speak, 24 Tales: Appalachian Ghost Stories, Legends, and Other Mysteries, and The Southern Poetry Anthology. Dunlap’s works also include A Walk to the Spring House (Iris Press, 2021), Knead (Main Street Rag, 2016), and Story Tender (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Dunlap shares: “My kin carry stories of our culture and history here in Appalachia. Some seem strange to outsiders but never to me. I seek to honor and preserve my kin and their stories.”

Sue Weaver Dunlap’s Thursday’s Child flows through family generations originating in the Cherokee Nation’s mountains, inhabiting copper mining’s gritty streets and textile workers’ living quarters, back to the peace of mountain hollers, solace of clear spring and birdsong. Poems, woven by longing and memory, are a tribute to the resilience of spirit, nature’s seasons a metaphor for life’s passages, web of words to hold secure any baby born on the fifth day of the week. ~Connie Green

Reading Sue Weaver Dunlap’s new collection, Thursday’s Child, is like dipping into a scripture of family, each entry a psalm to a moment passed. Sometimes sweet, sometimes somber, often both, these poems call up the powerful and magical prayers of what it means to be kin. ~Darnell Arnoult, author of Incantations: Poems

Kin

I stand beyond sound, cleave unto the spirit
of words on this page, welcome home kin
to their old mountain holler. Jagged rocks take
on smooth sides, rain and snow weathered,
warmed by spring winds, summer sun.
We sit in the silent circle, hold fast home-
coming, our arms reaching across time.
Fingertips hold the caress of the women
we know formed us, loved us. Paths mark
us with comfortable wear, like our skin.
Our faces hold our story, our history.
Our journey meanders,
steadfast to sunrise, sunset, today.

Thursday’s Child

I imagine my mother’s summer pregnancy,
the days long and hot, East Tennessee humidity
bearing down, oppressive. Beans, tomatoes, corn,
garden canning taking no break in her house,
no air conditioning, windows open in feverish
prayer for a breeze, her older sons and daughters
flown early from a nest of work they abandoned
with their spring romances. I imagine the hours
spent boiling canning jars in her kitchen, Mama
standing alone, me pushing hard, shoulders
leaning up under her heavy breasts, loathe to enter
a world fraught with noise. The older mother
stealing quiet evenings, smocking colorful dresses
for this last child she knew would be a girl. Summer
work and sweat, her gray hair bunned slick and tight,

she waited on her August baby reticent
to come until the whisper of autumn.

What Of

the flightless bird, the one with wings clipped
before birth, a mutation, denied her wind,
weightless, blue skies, clouds at wing’s edge,

the awkward turkey flight to and from treetop
roosts, its wings fighting to gain purchase, single
destination, no journey or adventure, only ground,

the eagle whose grace and desire follow endless
landscapes, flight sure and set, free, an infinite
quest to soar full span, open and free and ready,

the lost girl at stream’s edge, dimpled fists tight
to her side, reflection lost in rippled distortions,
no purposeful flight, her wings of dreams, clipped.

Now Let Us Praise Unexpected Gifts

Late night full moon crests over
our back ridge, glows a path
for a marauding raccoon family,
midnight snack at bird feeder hill.

Spring rain, its warm sheet
floats over our bodies, close
doors to young love. We embrace
lingering dreams for tomorrow.

Dry weather rainbow over the Gulf,
a purple gift, eternity’s reminder
of promises kept. Dolphins play
off shore, glisten and roll.

Cardinal red, indigo blue,
canary yellow share space, peck
at seeds, no wildness in sharing,
grace in the bounty of the day.

Church bells echo down mountain
hollers, doors open wide
this Sunday morning, old time
hymns float the air, redemption.

Deer herd grazes nearby,
last year’s fawns run and chase,
Mama readying for late spring
babies. Reminders ebb and flow.