Jordan Dotson

Writer

about

The bitter smell in the blackberry briars…

By

I lean back, try to forget these fields and flanking hills. A long time before me or these tools, the Teays flowed here. I can almost feel the cold waters and the tickling the trilobites make when they crawl. All the water from the old mountains flowed west. But the land lifted. I have only the bottoms and stone animals I collect. I blink and breathe. My father is a khaki cloud in the canebrakes, and Ginny is no more to me than the bitter smell in the blackberry briers up on the ridge.

…from Trilobites, by Breece D’J Pancake.

Every time I read this guy, I feel like I’m watching a magic act.

Rushing nothing on…

By

Daylight fires the ridges green, shifts the colors of the fog, touches the brick streets of Rock Camp with a reddish tone. The streetlights flicker out, and the traffic signal at the far end of Front Street’s yoke snaps on; stopping nothing, warning nothing, rushing nothing on.

…from The Honored Dead, compiled in The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, by the eponymous Appalachian author who I’m beginning to think may be the only writer ever from my home worth reading, and perhaps, more worth reading than ninety-nine percent of all the writers you’ve ever read.