Twelve Miles North of the Ohio River: poems by Scott Honeycutt. Number 4 in Volume Six of our limited-edition Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series. Available this August. 

Cover image: antique quilting cotton. Series design by Ron Mohring.

Published: August 1, 2018 [49 copies]
30 pages
$9.00

SCOTT HONEYCUTT is currently an assistant professor of English at East Tennessee State University. His first chapbook, This Diet of Flesh, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. When he is not teaching, Scott enjoys walking the hills of Appalachia and spending time with his family.

November Poem

Another November evening and above us fly Canada geese
from God-knows-where stalking for their landings.
Loud, busy birds they are not distressed with our concerns.

The oak leaves are down, strewing the remains of our year.
Even my neighbor has quit trying to fight them, so piles  
grow and blow like snowdrifts all over his yard.
Now is the season to appreciate this genre of day:
a grey swath of loneness, the crack of neglected verse,
and weather that frames consciousness.

This late-month windlass moves both thought and mood into water,
but you’re not here with me. 
You’re at your computer or with pencil-in-hand trying to name
that moment years ago when we kissed goodbye for a final time.
You recall those hurried words of your love
as he stepped into his car and drove away forever.
The streetlights that buzzed to life so early into the night 
sounded like bees forging honeycomb into corners of your mouth.
Even now you taste the sweet tang of almost.

As geese smother the bee-wings of summer with their downy memory,
a low murmur cuts another notch into my day,
the fleeting words of what I meant once and now always to say.

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