2026, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, prose, Prose Poem

one person’s truth is another’s annihilation

I remember the landscape of my old homeground by the absence of landmarks. Rolling east on the Appalachian Highway, the absence of green space shook my mental map and memory of the place. There used to be great draughts of space between Eastgate and the wild lands of southeast Ohio. It was the escape into a space that still felt unsettled and a little more free, a little more dangerous. The kind of place a person could test themselves and still breathe clean air and see the stars at night. Before the cellphone towers, before fiber optic tentacles and the empty promise of economic recovery. The only lies were the ones people told themselves, the ones from which great and terrible futures are written.


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2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Lit, the no-scape

T-Minus / Double-Edged Prayer

T-Minus

The morning after the storm
and the rocket launch, the first
I watched since 1986,
I’m drinking coffee and making plans
to roll on home down I-64.

There is always one more
countdown clock, always
another round of system checks
and then, when the time is right,
go.

Double-Edged Prayer

the grass grew in my absence
and still I have to service the mower:
new plug, new air filter,
the double-edged prayer
that pulling the cord will
and will not start the mower
and the summer will come, strangle
the house in tall grass and native weeds
terrifying the neighbors who walk their dogs
in front of my house on the same sidewalk
where the guy next door sells
his widower father’s prescription pain pills

[Daybook 2026 // Spring 4.2-4.3.26

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Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons

Poet. Essayist. Fictioner. Steamboat fireman. Bit of a grackle.

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