Poetry
WHEREAS Appalachia was always Black, queer, and wild:
by Torli Bush
a sax solo following the guitar riffs of a grunge duo
rocking against the man at 123 Pleasant Street in Morgantown.
WHEREAS Pittsburgh is our Paris, the Presbyterian church in East Liberty
a Notre Dame across from Capri’s Pizzeria where I started performing poetry.
The Abbey on Butler Street a quaint apothecary of food and spirits,
an alternative healing through hospitality and wine.
WHEREAS the religiosity has a way of splitting people,
I was the only Black person in my church growing up;
I say was cause I left it for Methodism,
not cause I left the faith altogether.
Many of us are still in the process of toppling White Jesus.
WHEREAS I have to get away from the fire & brimstone
so I run from Parcoal to Webster Springs and back every morning,
play basketball from 5PM to 1AM every weekend
for the entire summer with my rival of sixteen years
on the concrete courts of Baker’s Island.
WHEREAS I return home to my grandmother’s
corn-oil salt & peppered fried potatoes;
I throw some chicken in a skillet,
have a feast, and crash on the couch
cause my room’s wall mounted AC
got infested with yellow jackets one summer
and my grandpa had to kill ‘em and seal it up.
WHEREAS I’m having one of those wild dreams
of outrunning The Flatwoods Monster,
who swallows everything in his path
towards a pink sun horizon,
in my workhorse Chevy Impala
that my grandad got in 2005
when I was ten and hooked on the Playstation 2.
WHEREAS I stopped at a Tudor’s
along the way, I figured I had the time.
It was only the end of the world.
Til I saw The Mothman chase his dinner
down with raspberry moonshine,
fly out the window at Mach 1,
and beat the Monster’s green maw toothless
for threatening them biscuits.
WHEREAS I stepped through the exit of Tudor’s
and found myself back in Pittsburgh
performing at City of Asylum: a haven
for writers escaping political persecution abroad;
what a hope to write in the face of injustice,
WHEREAS I remember going to Harper’s Ferry
for the first time, learning about
Storer College and The Niagara Movement:
Black men becoming educators,
and planting seeds for the NAACP.
In West Virginia.
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED:
We have always been here
like the church,
the moonshine,
the wild music playing us out into the night.
Torli Bush is a poet from Webster Springs. He is a 2017 graduate of WVU’s Mechanical Engineering program, and is currently pursuing an MFA at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He has been featured at The Lewisburg Literary Festival, WV Governor’s School for the Arts, and Travelin’ Appalachians Revue.