Sherry Chandler » Mark Russell Brown

Mark Russell Brown

Mark Russell Brown, one of my favorite Kentucky poets, has announced that, “despite earthquakes & wildfires,” he’ll be leaving for San Francisco on June 6 to study Fashion Journalism at the Academy of Art University.

A member of the board of the Green River Writers and a graduate of the MFA program at Spalding University, Mark has been a valued friend and an invaluable critic to many of us in the writing community. We will miss him.

Here is one of Mark’s poems, originally published in BloodLotus

A Sense of Misplace

Rural Kentucky plus gay equals
ache of never feeling planted

when all around you
are rows and rows

of tobacco rooted
so deep it can’t be pulled.

I couldn’t tap
this soil for pabulum

or grip the clods
that others held tight.

I never conjured
the magic of plunging

gnarled fingers
into this hard clay.

I was the anti-farmer,
the odd non-member,

the alfalfa sprout that flaunted
its clean, blanched root

obscenely in the air.

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