Tag: North Carolina

NEW PROJECTS!

Hello all,

I would like to thank everyone who has started following me here over the years. “That’s Not Southern Gothic” was born from the back of a semi-truck sleeper cab on America’s highways… Most people didn’t even seem to know I was the one writing it. Most of the works that were once here have been taken down to be circulated elsewhere.

I am excited to let y’all know about new things I’ve got cooking. First of all, as before, you can see a list of my published works at www.jeremyrayjewell.com

I also now have a Patreon account: www.patreon.com/jeremyrayjewell

My Patreon subscribers can help me continue to produce works such as my critical essays, my poetry featured previously on “That’s Not Southern Gothic”, and much more. “Reader” level subscribers ($10 a month) gain access to all of my works, unpublished and previously published. That includes poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction.

It is very important to me that I create a group of readers who are engaged and who follow me in my future projects. Your financial support is only part of realizing that goal. In the future, as my reader, you can expect to see the following projects from me:

  • New blog on folklore from a psychoanalytically-informed and class-conscious perspective
  • Serialized novels
  • Physically published and commercially available poetry chapbook
  • Works of Spanish-English translation
  • Critical essays on in-depth topics of arts and culture with my signature style of critique
  • Collaborations with other artists from around the world
  • A new lease on life for “That’s Not Southern Gothic”, focused on recounting subaltern stories of real American life

Please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber so you can help make these things a reality.

Best,

Jeremy Ray Jewell

Tactile Afterlife

Originally published in Heron Clan VI

I was at the age to guard the way the creek flowed like
it was some penmanship of larger men into the brown Carolina
and since waited on the country road and backwoods bridge

to become the compassionate elder viewing young catastrophes
and stepping panic stricken out into the power line clearing
as into the incisions of the black bear through hickory bark.

Then the dogwood blossoms fell before you knew it,
and with a vomit of flora the pessimism echo was muffled
as only I now recall how one or the other will first die.

Though in that green fury I am elated that it may be me.
The revolutionist’s preference is to explode like spring spores.
To collapse like the winter buck is the blackest rot.

Such interest in the produce of minds, you know, but
Carolina grows and grows again out of the cavities of
unevacuated chests – it may only be so.

Good News Crackles

Originally published in Heron Clan VI

Driving through the Carolina forests late
at night and the radio moves from music with
advice to music with recipes. Then come the
Jesus stations – all 20 or so. One, then
another. Eventually one reaches out to you,
between the trees and through your headlights,
out of the products and pop songs, splitting
apart the comfortable and the beautiful and
the meaningful people like storm clouds overhead,
and it grabs you by the lapels. It’s been

looking for You, has a message for You. It
has a job. For You. An audio exit opens in
the highway and you’re on it. Exit 81.7 FM,
downtown Jerusalem, Edge of Empire, USA. When
it’s all over you keep it like a psalm in the
glove box, unfolding it for a second in the
parking lot before work, or you read it out
loud in the break room. Because Carolina has
some comfortable, beautiful, meaningful, dark
clouds hovering over it. Good news crackles

on the airwaves, and somewhere sometime it’s
got to rip. Prosperity will rain down on the
forests and the forest people will become
woodland titans. Pulled teeth will resprout.
Lost jobs will be found. We might even buy
back the farm. So think the dry bones
on the Carolina highways at night.