Straight from Roger's website:
"Call and Response is a photo-literary exploration devoted to the relationship between photographs and words. Using photographs from the Looking at Appalachia project, writers are encouraged to respond narratively to a single image in 1,000 words or less. We hope to use this platform to expand our community and encourage collaboration between photographers and writers."
Call and Response Guidelines:
Photo Credit: Garnet Bruell. September 9, 2014 in Fayetteville, Fayette County, West Virginia.
Third Generation
The photo of my grandfather,
face begrimed and eyes stunned
by the light, sits on the dresser
in the back bedroom where
no one hardly goes these days.
Grandma thinks he’s still alive.
She’s looking for his lunch bucket,
two slices of white bread
and an apple in her apron pocket.
“He’ll be hungry come the whistle,”
she says. “Where’s he at? He forgot
to carry his pail down the mine.”
My daddy, he’s down the mine,
says it ain’t so bad anymore.
“Good money. Good benefits.
Reckon it’s more’n I deserve.”
But his eyes light up when he sees
the fat envelope with a far-off zip code
land in the box at the end of the drive.
“Go on,” he says. “They’s more
to life than digging black gold.
You got eyes to see further than me.”
I prop the envelope against grandaddy’s photo.
Consider what the paper inside might say.
I’m betting it says to keep my headlamp on
even in the light of day.