![\"Middle](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.everywritersresource.com\/selfpublished\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/johndaviscover-3-202x300.jpg?resize=202%2C300\" "\\"Middle")
Author<\/h2>\nJohn Davis Jr.<\/p>\n
John Davis Jr. is a Florida poet and educator. His work has appeared in literary journals internationally, with recent appearances in Nashville Review (Vanderbilt University) and Steel Toe Review. He holds an MFA from University of Tampa, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook of poems about fatherhood and mentorship, The Boys of Men, was published earlier this year by Kelsay Books of California.<\/p>\n
Middle Class American Proverb is a collection of poems about life in the most traditional part of the Sunshine State, its heart. As a sixth-generation Floridian from a pioneer family, John Davis Jr. uses the history, people, and places of central Florida to reveal a slice of life there. Among these poems about life on a citrus farm are other narrative and image-rich pieces dealing with topics as diverse as living with Epilepsy, working for a small-town newspaper, and even losing a child. Called “a fabulous debut…not to be missed” by Erica Dawson, winner of the 2006 Anthony Hecht Prize in Poetry, Middle Class American proverb crosses boundaries of form and style, and rings with the universality of Robert Frost, among other influences.<\/p>\n
The Meaning of Wauchula
\n\u201cBuzzards\u2019 Roost,\u201d the old-timers muttered,
\nrecalling the sun-trodden cowhands before them:
\nHearty Hardee County folk who knew
\ntoo well those pasture scavengers\u2019
\noily black feathers, scale-crusted skulls \u2013
\nturkey vultures awaited free carcasses
\nfrom dead-limbed, dirty-mossed vantage points.
\n\u201cIbises\u2019 Flight,\u201d the scoutmaster explained,
\npointing to a Seminole dictionary:
\nRhythmic shushes of white tapered wings unified
\nin the Audubon beauty of postcard Florida \u2013
\nslender-sleek, sickle-beaked graceful birds
\ncrossing, caressing an orange-dusk horizon.
\nIn the end, it became what we made it:
\nA brittle death-and-desertion existence,
\nor accumulated desires flying onward \u2013
\nthe nightmarish scrape of cold beaks on bones,
\nor the light, smooth sound of our dreams\u2019 ascent.
\nBroken History
\nOur farmhouse\u2019s thick crystal doorknobs
\ncaptured the light of a sepia age handled
\nby forefathers\u2019 soil-worked palms,
\nmothers\u2019 pricked fingertips.
\nA tentative turner, uncertain of things
\nfine and fragile, in childhood I tested
\neach slow and spectral rotation, rounding
\nhallway sunlight in antique hours\u2019 glass.
\nThe day I broke one off, I cried
\nas color and sparkle trickled
\nout, leaving a hard and lifeless chunk
\nreflecting my hand, magnifying my crime.
\nNo tape, no glue would ever bring it back:
\nA relic relegated to the dark
\ndrawer of a mahogany box:
\nour tabled sewing machine.
\nOld Florida Upstairs
\nLife in a lowdown flat land means
\nthere\u2019s nowhere to go but up.
\nOur attics store the rising heat
\nand just-in-case leftovers:
\nHurricane season\u2019s window boards,
\nformer follies and fascinations \u2013
\navarice\u2019s aftermath among
\nrat poisons and pointed rafters.
\nNow and then, a sin-curious child
\nwill trespass, take a wrong step, crash
\nthrough the drop-ceiling panels, hang
\non to hot and splintery cross beams
\nwhile beneath, guilty legs and feet flail
\ninto calm, conditioned air of futility
\npouring from pure white vents connected
\nto silver, filth-laden passageways \u2013
\nductwork overhead whispering nothings\u2019
\nassurances: Everything is fine, fine, fine\u2026
\nHanging Sheets at her Late Parents\u2019 Place
\nShe likes their smell, she says:
\nking-sized unfitted linens dried
\nin farm fashion \u2013 clothesline, sun.
\nAt her childhood home where no one lives,
\nshe still takes in the everyday mail, dusts
\nthe crystal, checks the ice bin.
\nHalf an hour northwest, her grown-up house
\nclicks and hums its modern sounds \u2013
\nstatic in her southeastern absence.
\nLight wind ripples her bone-colored bedclothes,
\nwaving them like farewell handkerchiefs
\nor white flags of final surrender.
\nThe Left Farm
\nThere\u2019s a lot he misses these days:
\nThat view from the barntop
\nas color warms into the crops,
\nthe hanging diesel smoke cranked
\nfrom an elderly red tractor,
\na low, humming groan at the pump
\nwhere the well sends strong-smelling
\nsulfur water through irrigation
\nlines, down rows of emerald,
\nand past a lone, age-painted
\nfarmhouse: sitting, waiting
\nfor his return, his touch
\ninherited and learned from proud
\ngenerations of ancestors.
\nHis blood and hands and head
\nache for the land, the tasks before:
\nbefore this time and state,
\nbefore the man who toils
\nwithout tilling for a living.
\nThere\u2019s a lot he misses these days.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.poetjohndavisjr.com\/<\/a><\/p>\nBest place to buy your book<\/h2>\n