~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Ian Hall

Diatribe of the Runner-Up in a Piddling Local Election

If you happen upon a man from Letcher County, knock

him flat. He’ll already know

the why, the wherefore. That place is rotten

with southpaws & anemics. & there even

the christlike suffer from derangement

of the tear ducts—always snotting or wailing. To this

I’d swear an affidavit. But mercy is a virtue: I won’t beat

a dead horse & bring up how tectonically

stupid they are. How all their gray

matter has been gnawed out

by Creutzfeldt-Jakob’s. How grubby

backstrap from a 1 & 1/2 point yearling has left their gaze

slack & smarmy as anchovies in an apocalypse

proof tin. Upcountry dense

is an understatement. & it goes without saying that they all smell

like smoldering ozone. Abominable breath to boot. From snarfing

squirrel brains & eyeshadow crayon. Anything

to appease their Pica. & the weather: dismal

is too clement a word—stormfall daily

makes dulcimer music in the dingiest key. Weeds

overflush every fencerow, but there’s no toolage

to chasten a bratty crop. & God forbid you’re after any

municipal outreach, or aiming to foster

community: those folks will only donate blood

to a barroom floor. They wouldn’t know

what a competent civil servant looked like

if one was to the knuckle in their prostate. Here’s

my naked surmise: they’ll be electing Vandals

& Visigoths over that way until the behemoth

engine block at the core of the earth

finally cracks. Doubtless it’s a great comfort to a moron

to see other morons pulling strings, but that doesn’t

acquit their idiot voting. They’ll throw in

with any demagogue, any pork-barreler

who’ll share a noxious supper with them & swear

to see about gentling those pill-peddler charges

the state has against their uncle

or mutant nephew. I’ll work

like a borrowed mule for my constituents. But uprightness

is a strike against you in our times. Now it’s seedy

panache that fills the gymnasiums. Enough dolor: I’m glad

to report that one county over, in the land

of Knott, it’s all power & light. Cell phone service

is stalwart, & there’s a monster

bass boat in every third yard. Better still, people don’t rear

back from your howdies & how goes its like spitting

cobras. & here & now I’m witched

no more by rueful loomings. Even in the creaky

scruff of this bed where my great & lesser uncles did much

of their dying, my sleep

is mothball bliss. I wouldn’t hoodwink you: they should bottle

this town & sell it as spiritual

colonic, cause the heretic germ is absent from this lot. Just

yesterday I treated myself to a cherry snowcone at the First

Baptist fundraiser. It heartened

me to learn they called that flavor God’s

Hemoglobin. So smack dab I decided to hang

on democracy’s cross for these people. To stomach

the backbiters & peacocking parliamentarians for another term

in their stead. Here’re the good

tidings: mine will be a name

on the ballot next fall because there never was

a nobler electorate. & crony, nothing would

tickle me more than adding your X

to my roster of esteemed backers. Scrawl

here please.

The Selected Works of Judas Iscariot

Now we’re all waterlogged

Baptists here, so none of that

postmodern stuff. Just learn

us what’s making the boy act oblong. While speaking, the principal never looks up

from his bologna sandwich. This disinterest is spelled out by his Fu Manchu

of mustard & jus. Heimliched by gust & downpour, the blousefront

of the counselor is steeply rumpled. She quits the principal’s office

without gussying herself, leaves behind footsteps

in a sopping fluer-de-lis. The lowdown: she is from Saint Paul, a former Peace

Corps mendicant, deployed to Kentucky on grant. What she is after is forgiveness

for her student loans. She has a bachelor’s in Psychology, & that’s good enough to shrink

heads in this district. But for the inaugural month, all she did was fret

the woodfungus off her desk with the heavenmost point

of that crucifix that wouldn’t stop bowing its nail. Finally, her first: a boy

named Judas Iscariot Jacobs. Word was, his father gave the name to let him know

from the nonce that he had sin enough on the pearly ledgers

to never get anywhere

near square. In disposition, he’d always waxed bizarre—he didn’t walk

until the age of 12, his elder brothers just yakking him around

on their haunches, & if asked why he’d say no one ever bothered

to teach him proper. But of a sudden he’d taken to silence. Six months

devoutly mute. Last week, to beat it all, he was in remedial

gym when the coach decided he’d had a bellyful of the boy’s quiet

truancy, aiming to cow him in front of the others. Speak up

if you’re any kind of man, said Coach. Judas simply motioned

for pencil & paper, scratched something, then held it up: that hair on your chest

is just a toupee. & now, étouffée of sweat & eagerness in the crockpot

her palms make, she waits for him. Instantly, she can tell he isn’t long

among the upright. At their joinings, his limbs

are too lenient, chopper-blading all directions

but cardinal. He sits down like someone unkinking

a colostomy bag. She begins with niceties, the performative

saccharines highbrows use to flavor

the bite out of what they’re after. An hour into it, & he’s still got that face on. Bland

as leek broth. Instinctually, she reaches him some scraps

of paper. Two caterpillar back. The first: you’re the type to remind me of my table manners

during a famine. The second says only talk bald. At dismissal, eons later, she goes

marrowless into the principal’s office. He spoke once, but I’m still recommending a Special

Ed evaluation. There are egregious developmental delays. He couldn’t

answer the most straightforward question off my template. The principal says hold on

to your horses. Let’s me & you give him another go before we bugle after

the bureaucrats. They’re always skunking things up. Besides, we’re one sentence

to the better. Way I spy it, progress is more atribe to a squirt gun

than a pressure washer. So at morning bell, in a classroom

of gulag brick, they batter him with questions

avant-garde to anal. Through all this his vegetableness abides. By lunch, the knot

in the principal’s necktie is lasso-slack. I never claimed to be

Mr. Sophistication, he says, but your questions would even have me figuring

on my fingers & toes. They are licking wounds in a utility closet. When we go back, shelve

that bunk: ask claws-out the same thing that got him talking yesterday. What

are the four seasons? came out of her mouth before the hingework hushed. That’s

kindergarten stuff, Judas says: squirrel, deer, rabbit, & turkey. The atrophy

in his voice is like trick nails

on a blackboard. After a tall second, the principal says scurry back to class, Judas. We’re done

& field-dressed here. What a crime it would’ve been to loose the whitecoats on him, the principal

says soon as the boy is clear of earshot, testing the easy in his chair. You can’t

be serious. The counselor’s face is an oil portrait by some stern & penniless Netherlander

of exasperation. He is clinically unwell; he needs a psychiatric renaissance. What that boy needs

is an old wiseman to pitch his tree stand, doctor his rifle. The principal is bushwhacking the flak

from his indexnail with a free lunch voucher. He might not speak frequent, but when he does talk

he talks plain sense.

Ian Hall was born and reared in Eastern Kentucky. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English at Florida State University. His work is featured in Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, and The Southeast Review, among others.