by Carol Parris Krauss
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Some people like to comb the beach for gold coins, silver medals. There’s an entire group of Civil War buffs who scan the fields of Suffolk, traipse down to the marsh looking for mini-balls and musket pieces. You can purchase the luxury metal detector for just over a hundred bucks plus shipping online. Artifacts. Webster defines the word as an item of cultural or historical interest. Pieces of who we were, the battles we chose. I know a man who has an entire room walled with knotty-pine shelves where he displays his Rebel buttons, Union canteens, and the occasion dried-up timber rattler. His wife watches from the kitchen window as he walks the fallow fields with his robot arm shaking. Hours later, he comes inside and grabs his iced tea. Two lemons. Plops down on the plaid couch he inherited from Me-maw and begins to watch Live @ Five. Breaking news coming from Tennessee. How an entire building seems to be jam-packed with artifacts. Old white antiques hidden away in locked rooms. Secrets covered in a layer of dust.
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Carol Parris Krauss loves to use vivid imagery. Her work is in One Art, The SC Review, Louisiana Literature, Broadkill Review, Story South, and Susurrus. She was recognized by the UVA press as a Best New Poet and her first book Just a Spit Down the Road was published by Kelsay.
I enjoyed your poem.