Le Hinton
Contest - 1st Place
Le Hinton is the author of four poetry collections including, Black on Most Days (Iris G. Press, 2008) and The God of Our Dreams (Iris G. Press, 2010). His work has been (or soon will be) published in Watershed, Gargoyle, haggard and halloo, Little Patuxent Review, Literary Chaos, Fox Chase Review, Bent Pin Quarterly and in the anthology/cookbook Cooking Up South. In 2012, his poem, “Our Ballpark,” was incorporated into Derek Parker’s sculpture Common Thread and installed at Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as part of the Poetry Paths project. He is the founder and chief editor of the poetry journal Fledgling Rag.
Epidemic
fed oak slabs to a passive stove
heat
breakfast
the surviving family
at the kitchen table she trusted King James
belief
in his god and this ravenous influenza
a life with two fewer sons
each belief burned away in a fever
each night full of reaching for tiny hands
*
each night full of reaching for tiny hands
each belief burned away in a fever
a life with two fewer sons
in his god and this ravenous influenza
belief
at the kitchen table she trusted King James
the surviving family
breakfast
heat
fed oak slabs to a passive stove
each morning Grandmom awakened
“ `Epidemic’ was written after a series of conversations with my now 83-year-old mother. Her father and young brothers died during an influenza epidemic. I have always been amazed at the strength of my grandmother who raised six children during the depression years, lost a husband, children, and at the other end of her life, outlived two more children. How does one move from one day to the next? How do we keep going? What do we tell ourselves in the middle of the night? ”