Tag: Carol Parris Krauss

Maple Street, Brevard NC by Carol Parris Krauss

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Maple Street, Brevard NC

With great difficulty we had located the house
renumbered by the county a while back.

The color remained the same, green
like the belly of a rhododendron leaf;

some shutters had been added.
For a mountain minute, I saw

myself at age ten, propelling the glider
with my dirty feet.

Pushing off faded slats to
the twang of the rusty springs,

Nanny rattling pans in the kitchen,
Pa-paw’s raspy cough.

We didn’t linger long. Just enough time
to notice the kitchen windows

smaller, double-paned, allowing for less
view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

It was harder for me to peer in,
to see more.

*

Carol Parris Krauss is a mother, teacher, and poet from the Tidewater region of Virginia. In 2018, the University of Virginia Press recognized her as a Best New Poet. This Clemson University graduate has work published in numerous online and print magazines such as Louisiana Review, Dead Mule, Broadkill Review, Schuylkill Valley Review, Storysouth, Amsterdam Quarterly, Hastings College Plainsongs, and the South Carolina Review. Her first book, Just a Spit down the Road, was published by Kelsay in 2021 and she was the winner of the Eastern Writers Association Crossroads Contest.

Pretty Bottles All in a Row by Carol Parris Krauss

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Pretty Bottles All in a Row

My grandparents’ home was thumb-smashed into the side of a mountain.
The garage, a dark cave with drills, hammers, and chains crisscrossing
from the rafters. Above it was a wide porch. A swing at one end
and a slider, covered in cabbage rose vinyl, at the other end. It would squeak
and rustle simultaneously when propelled by your feet.

My family would pile into our Pontiac station wagon, and traverse
Caesars Head to spend afternoons with my father’s parents. After Papaw
passed, they told me he was an alcoholic. I don’t remember that. I do recall
a chest filled with carved wooden toys, his ability to tell a tale, and his laugh.
Half-Camel unfiltered. Half bubbling mountain stream.

I also recollect all those pretty bottles on the kitchen window ledge. Some
slender; others rotund or just plain squatty. Bright blue, ruby red. Gulf green.
The sun would hit them right around noon. Each bottle glistened. Throwing
a rainbow against the kitchen walls. Painted, covered what this grandchild
didn’t know. Didn’t want to know.

*

Carol Parris Krauss is a mother, teacher, and poet from the Tidewater region of Virginia. In 2018, the University of Virginia Press recognized her as a Best New Poet. This Clemson University graduate has work published in numerous online and print magazines such as Louisiana Review, Dead Mule, Broadkill Review, Schuylkill Valley Review, Storysouth, Amsterdam Quarterly, Hastings College Plainsongs, and the South Carolina Review. Her first book, Just a Spit down the Road, was published by Kelsay in 2021 and she was the winner of the Eastern Writers Association Crossroads Contest.