Christopher Martin
At Paradise Garden
For this world is not our lasting home; we seek a home that is to come.
—Hebrews 13:14
Allatoona Range to Ridge and Valley,
Etowah River to the Oostanaula,
we drive two hours to Summerville,
cross Armuchee Creek, flank ridges
that saw Sherman make plans
to march to the sea, burn this all down.
Road cuts reveal seafloor rock―
age of the fishes, age of amphibians,
ancient time locked in highway embankments
of the Holocene—age of the atom bomb,
age of visions, age of the Word.
We turn off 27 before the Wal-Mart,
park in a ditch along a chain-link fence
where a scrap-metal-plated chapel—the World’s
Folk Art Church —rises above a kudzu wall.
An obligatory photo by a cheap tarp sign―
R.E.M filmed their first music video here―
the chained dog barking from an adjacent yard,
the $10 entry at the gate, and we are in the festival.
Our daughter, age four, humors us maybe five minutes
before the whining starts, which not even a rainbow
snow cone soothes. I taste the ice as not to waste money―
frozen strawberry, lemon, grape, everything—olive
branch in the mouth of a makeshift dove,
nothing but cold sugar, not even bread,
which would not be enough in itself
to keep each tempter at bay.
I want to go home, she repeats several times
as folk art serpents—deceivers, tricksters―
prayer flags, apocalyptic visions, and all the rest
unfold around us in this garden pieced together,
night and day, by a man from another world.
Dust and garbage smell, holy child, holy mother
muted in concrete, everywhere signs of the fall,
and a desire to absorb this place and leave it,
to go home, which, after a while—after so many
mirrors, so much rust and shattered glass
transformed to art—is what we do.
Christopher Martin is author of This Gladdening Light: An Ecology of Fatherhood and Faith, which won the 2015 Will D. Campbell Award in Creative Nonfiction and will be published by Mercer University Press in 2017. He is also author of the poetry collections Marcescence: Poems from Gahneesah (Finishing Line Press, 2014), Everything Turns Away: Poems from Acworth and the Allatoonas (La Vita Poetica Press, 2014), and A Conference of Birds (New Native Press, 2012). Chris’s work has appeared in publications across the country, including American Public Media’s On Being, Broad River Review, Buddhist Poetry Review, Loose Change, McSweeney’s, Pilgrimage, Poecology, Ruminate Magazine, Shambhala Sun, Still: The Journal, Thrush Poetry Journal, and Waccamaw. His poems are anthologized in Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (University of South Carolina Press, 2016), The World is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins (Clemson University Press, forthcoming), Stone, River, Sky: An Anthology of Georgia Poems (Negative Capability Press, 2015), and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012). The editor of Flycatcher, a contributing editor at New Southerner, and winner of the 2014 George Scarbrough Award for Poetry, Chris teaches English at Georgia Highlands College and creative nonfiction at the Appalachian Young Writers Workshop. He lives with his wife and their two young children in northwest Georgia, between the Allatoona Range and Kennesaw Mountain. [www.christopher-martin.net.]
Return to July 2016 Edition
For this world is not our lasting home; we seek a home that is to come.
—Hebrews 13:14
Allatoona Range to Ridge and Valley,
Etowah River to the Oostanaula,
we drive two hours to Summerville,
cross Armuchee Creek, flank ridges
that saw Sherman make plans
to march to the sea, burn this all down.
Road cuts reveal seafloor rock―
age of the fishes, age of amphibians,
ancient time locked in highway embankments
of the Holocene—age of the atom bomb,
age of visions, age of the Word.
We turn off 27 before the Wal-Mart,
park in a ditch along a chain-link fence
where a scrap-metal-plated chapel—the World’s
Folk Art Church —rises above a kudzu wall.
An obligatory photo by a cheap tarp sign―
R.E.M filmed their first music video here―
the chained dog barking from an adjacent yard,
the $10 entry at the gate, and we are in the festival.
Our daughter, age four, humors us maybe five minutes
before the whining starts, which not even a rainbow
snow cone soothes. I taste the ice as not to waste money―
frozen strawberry, lemon, grape, everything—olive
branch in the mouth of a makeshift dove,
nothing but cold sugar, not even bread,
which would not be enough in itself
to keep each tempter at bay.
I want to go home, she repeats several times
as folk art serpents—deceivers, tricksters―
prayer flags, apocalyptic visions, and all the rest
unfold around us in this garden pieced together,
night and day, by a man from another world.
Dust and garbage smell, holy child, holy mother
muted in concrete, everywhere signs of the fall,
and a desire to absorb this place and leave it,
to go home, which, after a while—after so many
mirrors, so much rust and shattered glass
transformed to art—is what we do.
Christopher Martin is author of This Gladdening Light: An Ecology of Fatherhood and Faith, which won the 2015 Will D. Campbell Award in Creative Nonfiction and will be published by Mercer University Press in 2017. He is also author of the poetry collections Marcescence: Poems from Gahneesah (Finishing Line Press, 2014), Everything Turns Away: Poems from Acworth and the Allatoonas (La Vita Poetica Press, 2014), and A Conference of Birds (New Native Press, 2012). Chris’s work has appeared in publications across the country, including American Public Media’s On Being, Broad River Review, Buddhist Poetry Review, Loose Change, McSweeney’s, Pilgrimage, Poecology, Ruminate Magazine, Shambhala Sun, Still: The Journal, Thrush Poetry Journal, and Waccamaw. His poems are anthologized in Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (University of South Carolina Press, 2016), The World is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins (Clemson University Press, forthcoming), Stone, River, Sky: An Anthology of Georgia Poems (Negative Capability Press, 2015), and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012). The editor of Flycatcher, a contributing editor at New Southerner, and winner of the 2014 George Scarbrough Award for Poetry, Chris teaches English at Georgia Highlands College and creative nonfiction at the Appalachian Young Writers Workshop. He lives with his wife and their two young children in northwest Georgia, between the Allatoona Range and Kennesaw Mountain. [www.christopher-martin.net.]
Return to July 2016 Edition