The Poetry Show: Mama Sez --- ”Don’t Drive, on I-95”

  

Enlighten Radio Presents

 Stop The Car!!
Mark Dody, Erin Murphy, Matt Del Gusto, Joshua Frank, Meril Crabtree

 

 

The Interstate existence is largely indifferent to human values. Leave it -- what has been left behind?

Wednesdays 10 Am on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded July 15, 2026

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Heaven for Helen

by Mark Doty

Helen says heaven, for her,
would be complete immersion
in physical process,
without self-consciousness

to be the respiration of the grass,
or ionized agitation
just above the break of a wave,
traffic in a sunflower's thousand golden rooms.

Images of exchange,
and of untrammeled nature.
But if we're to become part of it all,
won't our paradise also involve

participation in being, say,
diesel fuel, the impatience of trucks
on August pavement,
weird glow of service areas
along the interstate at night?

We'll be shiny pink egg cartons,
and the thick treads of burst tires
along the highways in Pennsylvania:
a hell we've made to accompany

the given: we will join
our tiresome productions,
things that want to be useless forever.

But that's me talking. Helen
would take the greatest pleasure
in being a scrap of paper,
if that's what there were to experience.

Perhaps that's why she's a painter,
finally: to practice disappearing
into her scrupulous attention,
an exacting rehearsal for the larger

world of things it won't be easy to love.
Helen I think will master it, though I may not.
She has practiced a long time learning to see
I have devoted myself to affirmation,

when I should have kept my eyes on the ground.

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Poetry Show: Appalachia

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Diamonds in my Coal Bucket

 

Appalachian poets deliver compelling and powerful stories and images of (among the) most ancient mountains. Dora Malech, Robert Lewis Weeks, Frank X. Walker, Sarah Loudin Thomas, Pauletta Hansel, and more...

Broadcast Wednesdays, 10 AM on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded 07072026 --

Mountain Mama

by Sara Loudin Thomas

 

Mountain Mama
There is truth in the trailer park

and honesty in the car on blocks.

Starvin’ Marvin and “as seen on TV”

live cheek by jowl with the likes

of handmade quilts and apple butter;

old-time music and the oral tradition.

Some folks say it isn’t True,

isn’t the way things used to be.

But lose a grandfather to the mines,

an uncle to the war, your mother

to a cancer that gnaws at her soul—

lose a child for no reason you can see.

Then you’ll find the fragile beauty

in the never-ending yard sale.

You’ll learn to love the tourists

who buy corncob pipes, coonskin caps,

and lumps of coal carved like bears.

When the giant timber companies

run the local sawmill out of money

and Aunt Eunice can’t remember your name—

when your best friend moves to California

and minimum wage is doing alright, man.

Then you’ll find the potent wisdom

in workers’ compensation, food stamps

and tonight’s lotto number—

dear God let me win.

A one in a billion chance is better

than watching the land your ancestors

cleared wash away . . . no wish away

on the promises of strip mines

and a future you can’t afford to wait.

At night, the lights from Wal-Mart glow

like the promise of a better tomorrow.

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com