“[My mother] and I live in the country a few miles outside of Milledgeville. The place is a dairy farm and I am glad to say that most of the violences carried to their logical conclusions in the stories manage to be warded off in fact here—though most of them exist in potentiality.”
–Flannery O’Connor
And it’s my stories that save us
from the ravages of not-so-good
country people who will steal your fake leg
out from under you, marry your daughter
just to get your car and abandon her
at the Hot Spot, too tired to lift her
pretty pink head, who will set your woods
on fire for fun, kill your family one by one,
and leave you on the side of the road
much the worse for wear. I couldn’t bear
to just sit there, let evil have its way
with me and mine. So I rise each day
and write down horrors I pray don’t come true.
To fend off the devil, you give him his due.
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