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Nearer to Vital Truth

[CORRECTION: The poem originally attributed to T.J. Anderson III in the print edition of the Winter 2023 issue (“West Fork of the Little”) was in fact written by Thorpe Moeckel and attributed to T.J. Anderson III in error. The two poems now included below (“live lyre” and “interview”) were written by T.J. Anderson III and are from his new book, t/here it is. We regret this error.]

Hollins has long been championed as a creative hub, and perhaps in no category is this better known than in its creative writing. Its online Hollins Authors (hollins.edu/authors) database includes over 1,000 alumnae/i who have had works published across a wide range of topics and categories, with a sizeable portion of those in the areas of fiction and poetry.

Since October 2022, three current and former Hollins professors and one alumna have had books of poetry published, and we highlight a selection from each here in the closing “Creative Corner” section of this issue. T.J. Anderson III recently published t/here it is in January 2023. Thorpe Moeckel published According to Sand: Poems in October 2022. Professor Emerita Cathryn Hankla ’80, M.A. ’82 published Immortal Stuff: Prose Poems in February 2023. Annie Woodford ’99, M.A. ’00 published Where You Come From is Gone: Poems in October 2022.

t/here it is by T.J. Anderson III

live lyre

Mr. Woodworth
the toupee
wearing choral
director
warned me
my “power to
the people”
button was
too incendiary

interview

“and you are so
articulate”
was the ass-end
of a backhanded
compliment dispensed
by a business man
who prided himself
on his ability to discern
my curriculum vitae

—T.J. Anderson III

Where You Come From Is Gone by Annie Woodford

We Have Come
Through to the Grass

after James Still

All the little calves rising
all the mud all the sarvis berry
wild cherry the valentine tips
of maples and plum all
the lavender of unopened
oak velveting the mountainside
all the morel all the smell
of chicken shit spread on fields
all the suffering stink of it
lay me down beside your dying
my shame is that I wasn’t there
to hold you keep you clean
conjure lambs and measure
morphine moisten your lips
tell you the story you told me
how your father once
hid a case of moonshine
from the law that was knocking
on your door by tucking jars
all around your mama dog
and her new puppies suckling
on a pile of rags in the basement
and you knelt there tending
them while the men shined
flashlights over your mama’s
canning the inside of her chest
freezer the wardrobe full
of clothes and found nothing
while the puppies whined
and struggled to draw closer
to their mother their eyes
still closed their bellies
still tender from their bitten
umbilical cords knotted blood
you could feel against your palm
as you lifted them to your cheek
their paws scrabbling the air
and they searched blindly
with their perfect snouts
trying to lift their heads

—Annie Woodford ’99, M.A. ’00

According to the Sand: Poems by Thorpe Moeckel

LITTLE REED CREEK

Here’s about to, the prepwork,
saprise & seepdrip. Here
is all there
isn’t to know.

*

Schisms in the soilsphere –
toothwort, violet, cleaver.

*

Early April,
poplar’s green shiver,
visibility for glades.

*

This ridge Terrapin Mountain,
that one, White Oak Knob –
no morels yet, many ferns still curled.

*

Plungepools & pocketwater –
trillium there, & there, trillium.

*

Don’t call it work
what the boulders do,
but what they don’t do, the rest.

*

The punchbowls, the hollows in every hollow.

*

Here is lair, and the waterthrush
at evening piping up,
at morning, too.

*

Still a little bite in the air,
still a little gobbler scratch, & rue.

*

The duff a treatise on parchment,
weather’s imprint,
notes on the future,
the last next generation all at once.

*

Buckrub & split trunk, a tick in your flanksteak,
deadfall, more deadfall.
If zest, if spritz.

*

That it go on, the hellebore,
the black birch’s shelf life,
polypore & parasitic burls.

*

Anemone, anemone.

—Thorpe Moeckel
first published in Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review

Immortal Stuff: Prose Poems by Cathryn Hankla '80, M.A. '82

HeLa

Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant across the tracks in my

town in 1920. My mother was also born at home in the same

town in 1918 and named Joyce. After being dropped in Clover when

her mother died, Henrietta had to plant and harvest tobacco

until her hands were sticky and stained. Growing up, my mother

spent as much time as possible in the public library, turning

pages of books. In college, she got a summer job there. Joyce and

Henrietta both married in 1941, one couple in April, the other

in June. Henrietta already had two children and would have three

more. Ten years later, Henrietta Lacks died from cervical cancer

in Johns Hopkins hospital the year my mother gave birth to

her first child. Nothing touched the pain Henrietta endured.

Without her knowledge, her cells were harvested and cultured for

medical research. The HeLa immortal cell line is still doubling

and redoubling in test tubes around the world. Both of the

houses where Loretta/Henrietta lived in my town have been torn

down. The houses where my mother lived are still standing.

My mother died in 2016 of old age without any grandchildren.

I asked her to spit into a vial, so I could learn more about

my ancestry. She was skeptical but took the test for me. When her

results came back they revealed mostly what she’d said, British

Isles. I have no idea where I’m going with this. There’s really

no comparison to make between my mother and Henrietta Lacks.

Cathryn Hankla ’80, M.A. ’82, professor emerita, Immortal Stuff: prose poems (Mercer University Press, 2023)